Galaxy's End
by Sorge
Summary: A human castaway and a Jackal pirate face an odd journey together that will take them to the edge of the galaxy and back. Meanwhile, an elite Spartan hunts an elusive figure from the past as the insurrection threatens to rise again against the backdrop of the closing days of the Human-Covenant war.
1. Waking Up to Stars

**0230, August 13, 2552, Erandus System**

Warrant Officer Third-Class Keith Lockman woke up cold; colder than he'd ever been before. Tiny motes of frost danced in the air, blown by his shallow breath. His very bones felt frozen.

A slowly whirling starfield gradually came into focus, filling his field of view. His breath caught in his lungs as he fought back a wave of vertigo.

It took him a minute to remember where he was. The cramped steel casket surrounding him could only have been the cockpit of a Longsword fighter. He was still strapped into the pilot's chair, hands stiff on the armrests. The blinking instrument panels of Longsword B-279 flickered hazily at the edges of his vision, like a natural continuation of the endless sea of stars before him.

But something was wrong.

"Computer," he croaked. "Reset the life-support module."

There was a quiet musical tone followed by a muted hiss as vents beneath the console opened. The cabin pressure readjusted and the air grew noticeably warmer. He sucked breath as his flight suit slackened its hydrostatic hold on his torso, unlocking from High-G configuration. Breathing came more easily after that, and he took in air with great thirsty gulps.

"Life-support online," a hushed female voice confirmed.

Lockman sat shivering uncontrollably, getting used to the feeling of being alive. It was a while before he could do anything more than lie trembling in the dark. It was still deathly cold, and his back felt strange, like something was out-of-place on the inside. There was blood on the inside of his visor. His HUD was dark and refused to re-boot.

"Status report," he ordered, reaching out to grasp the Longsword's control yoke. Strands of information scrolled along the few remaining computer displays that weren't dimmed or cracked. The fighter craft had taken a beating.

"Longsword hull integrity at ninety-eight percent. Reactor offline. Reserve power at thirty-percent. All munitions expended," the computer said, and then paused, almost pensively. "Heading unknown."

"Position relative to UNSC _Miriam_?"

"Unknown."

Lockman groaned and sat up. The computer ought to be able to handle at least an approximation of their position based on the Longsword's rate of drift and trajectory, but the console merely displayed a flashing _'No Data'_ error message.

"Compare current position to starchart," he ordered.

"Analyzing."

The fighter pilot stared grimly out the viewscreen. His Longsword was in a slow spin, dead in space. But he was not alone. Against the cold light of the stars, the dark fuselage of another Longsword fighter drifted into view, scored with plasma and ruptured to the void. The tail number was unreadable, but he would have known the pilot.

The Covenant Seraph fighters had eaten them alive. It hadn't been a battle so much as a slaughter.

The hostile battlegroup had come upon the _Miriam _so suddenly, in the dead hours of the watch and with so many non-essential crewmembers in cryo that her understrength fighter squadron had been forced to scramble with only a few of its Longswords fully crewed, and in his case, with just the pilot. Outmatched and outnumbered by the more advanced Covenant fighters, they'd been just a momentary diversion for the alien pilots.

In a desperate move, Lockman had flown through a meteor cloud, and perhaps survived the longest, watching his wingmates drop off his IFF one by one as he darted and dodged with white knuckles on the yoke. He'd fired his last three ASGM-10 missiles at the Covenant carrier, watching them burn out their rocket motors and go wild kilometers from the target. He didn't remember anything after that, but he'd probably passed out under the stresses of High-G maneuvering.

A computer analysis told the rest of the tale. The bridge was damaged, but the bulkhead seemed sound. He checked the oxygen levels and found them breathable—but low. The Longsword was clearly losing atmosphere.

"Starcharts analyzed," the computer spoke. A ten-digit string of numerical coordinates flashed onscreen. Lockman blinked. He knew these coordinates by sight—most Naval aviators did.

"You're malfunctioning, chip-brain," he grumbled. "That's _Earth._"

"Analyzing," the computer said nonchalantly. "Navigation database corrupted. Database must be recompiled."

"Stand by," the pilot grunted. "Shut down to conserve power."

The console dimmed and Lockman shifted nervously. Conserving power was one thing, but there was something else bothering him. The chrono showed two hours since _Miriam _had made contact with the Covenant battlegroup. Space battles were usually over in half that.

There was no traffic on the battlenet, except for the automated distress beacons of a few Longsword fighters. It didn't mean anything, he knew—just a radio beacon automatically ejected on rapid decompression—unfortunately often just a marker for the recovery detail to find. The Covenant didn't leave survivors.

_Except me, _he thought, _I'm alive._

And he intended to do everything in his power to stay that way. Though never confirmed, rumor held that the Covenant had some means of homing in on unshielded transmissions. Lockman would take no chances. He'd keep all sensors dark until he had a better grasp of the situation. Paranoid, maybe, but what if the Covenant was still out there?

He allowed himself to consider the possibility. While it was theoretically possible that UNSC reinforcements might have arrived in time to turn the battle, the _Miriam _was only a frigate, and against a Covenant carrier and her two cruiser escorts, he had to admit that the odds were long. His Longsword was the carrier-based variety and did not carry its own Shaw-Fujikawa slipspace drive. He had rations enough for days... but the low oxygen readings worried him.

"Computer, confirm hull integrity," he ordered again, squinting at a virtual representation of the ship on the center console.

"Hull integrity scans at ninety-seven percent with a fluctuation of .03 percent per unit," the computer informed him in its feminine monotone.

"Show me," Lockman ordered. He rotated the three-dimensional image with a flick of his finger.

A color-coded representation of the hull sprang up, showing the hull chromatically as a patchwork quilt of light-colored superstructure and darker armor plating. The whole model pulsed with tiny warning symbols signifying compromised hull integrity. Lockman grimaced. It might have been a mistake on the sensors' part, but with the apparent loss of atmosphere, he could hardly afford to take anything for granted.

He hesitated a moment, unwilling to leave the cockpit with so many unknowns. But the feeling of control he felt from the pilot's chair was only illusory. If the Covenant found him drifting here without weapons or power, it wouldn't matter a lick.

Setting the proximity scanners to warn of any approaching craft, he unbuckled himself from the command chair and floated aft, using the handholds placed at regular intervals to access the Longsword's cramped engineering compartment. Cracking a chemlight between his teeth, he stooped to get at the deck panel. The panel came away easily and he set it aside. Doubtfully, he let the chemlight fall into the dark well.

What he saw was disheartening. Atmosphere hissed through hundreds of patches of self-sealing foam, each as large around as his thumb—what he recognized as micro-meteor impacts. The computer had claimed hull integrity of ninety-seven percent, but the damage was likely far more extensive. The Longsword's sensors were not calibrated to scan for such miniscule breaches, reading them as solid bulkhead.

The reality set in. The hull was probably pocked all over with thousands of tiny holes, far more than he could seal even with the aid of a vacuum suit, which he didn't have. The air was going to run out, and probably very soon.

Lockman made a quick calculation and generously estimated that about forty minutes of breathable oxygen remained in the ship. After that, he would have to seal his suit and switch to a respirator, buying perhaps twenty minutes more. It would make his work clumsy and slow, but his lungs were not rated to breathe vacuum. An hour to live—maybe.

He became uncomfortably aware of the dull groaning of metal stress from the Longsword's hull. It was clear that she would not last long in this state. If even one portion of the now-porous bulkhead were to give way, explosive decompression would follow and almost certainly kill him. His pressure suit was only rated out to six minutes of vacuum exposure. If the air ran out, he would die. If the Covenant found him first, he would die. There were not many options. He had to give fixing the ship a try.

With a roll of pilot's aluminized 'speed tape', he made an effort at patching the worst of the damage, though he knew the effort was borne of futility. The air felt thin in his lungs and he compensated with occasional breaths from his satchel-worn oxygen tank. At best possible speed, a cruiser dispatched from the inner colonies might arrive to search for survivors in just under twelve hours—far too long to hope for. A ship from Reach might have arrived sooner, but there was no Reach anymore, was there? The covies had glassed that too. He'd have to help himself.

The Longsword's reactor wasn't in much better shape. Heat from his high-speed maneuvers had taken the reactor super-critical. The galvanizing coil was charred and pocked with harsh radiation scarring and many of the unshielded components had simply melted. Everything combustible had burned, and leftover heat still radiated from the compartment. Lockman noted with some trepidation that all four of the automated fire-suppression nozzles had melted away in the brief inferno, though there was no smell of fire in the compartment. It had probably been sucked into space before the self-sealing nanomachines in the hull could counter.

Though there was no machine shop aboard, he'd have to have a go at fixing it because the alternative was a slow death by asphyxiation. So he rolled up his sleeves and got to work, sweating at the thought of Covenant fighters silently gliding in to put the Longsword fighter in their crosshairs. He'd be dead before he knew what hit him—a comforting thought.

_Ignore me, _he willed, _I'm junk—just ignore me until I can fight back, dammit._

The reactor safeties had to be reset manually, and he did so, one by one, following a rigorous step-by-step checklist on his wrist-worn tacpad. He worked methodically, cutting away sections of damaged bulkhead with an acetylene torch. The rigid adherence to detail focused his mind and he momentarily forgot his fears.

It was the only thing to do. It was all he _could _do. If the Covenant found him drifting here, without power, they'd fry him at their leisure. On the other hand, there might just be another UNSC vessel out there, derelict but perhaps with functioning life support or salvageable recharge cartridges for his respirator, but he didn't fancy a spacewalk to search the neighborhood for spare parts. Everything hinged on bringing the reactor back online.

The computer's whispering voice cut through his thoughts.

"Caution, Covenant vessel approaching."

Fear blossomed in his gut. He kicked off the bulkhead, bounding into the cockpit with urgency. The viewscreen showed nothing, but as he peered through it, anxiously scanning the stars for movement, he saw it—a flicker of blue against the black backdrop of space.

"Lights off," he ordered, his mouth dry. "Shut everything down."

The cabin lights flickered obediently, and the console went dark. The Longsword drifted dead in space once more.

He held his breath as a Covenant Phantom drifted into view, its running lights glowing cool purple. Were they fellow stragglers, or were they the clean-up detail, hunting for survivors?

"Have they seen us?" he asked. Covenant scanners were better than their own, but the Longsword was equipped with refractive sensor-defeating stealth coating, and he hoped he might get lost amidst the wreckage. He crossed his fingers.

"Dropship is actively scanning," the computer reported in the same flat monotone.

"Computer, confirm status of munitions," Lockman whispered, wondering if the Covenant might pick up on his words or the rapid beating of his heart. He was a Navy pilot, accustomed to flying high-adrenaline, high-risk operations, but this was different. He was not a contender—he was the helpless prey. He sat gripping the edge of his seat.

"No missiles remaining. All cannon rounds depleted."

He cursed. The sortie had been so rapid that he'd been forced to deploy without adequate armament. The phantom's gun would shred him. His grip on the seat became white.

"Standby to fire chemical thrusters," he ordered hoarsely. His only hope was rapid evasion. He only had enough fuel for a few quick burns. He wasn't even sure if the battered fighter could withstand the force of sudden acceleration.

Through the viewscreen, the phantom's ventral plasma cannon swivelled in the Longsword's direction and began to glow, cycling through the color spectrum from dark purple to electric blue.

"Warning, spike in gamma radiation detected. Covenant dropship has detected us."

_Shit. _That was that. He punched up a string of rapid maneuvers and waited for the end.

But instead of opening fire, the dropship drifted closer, angling to draw alongside his damaged fighter. A tiny docking collar emerged proboscis-like from the left pylon, quivering as it sought out his Longsword. Their intent was all too clear.

"Shit, they 're going to board us!"

_Was this worse?_ He flipped on the rescue beacon and opened a channel on the UNSC band.

"Mayday, mayday, this is Longsword B-279 requesting assistance from any UNSC personnel. I am being boarded by a Covenant vessel." His voice was so matter-of-fact that it surprised him. The fear was gone, repressed to a dull ache in his temples and replaced with a cool rush of clarity as his training took over.

He thought he might have heard a garbled codeword in the static that followed, but there was no response to his further queries, and he didn't have time to play radio-tag with some automated out-of-the-way UNSC monitoring station with a Covenant dropship closing on his Longsword.

He spun in his seat, jabbing his finger at the control console.

"Computer, initiate Cole Protocol article-three!"

Before he could take any other action, he had to make double-sure that the navigation database had been purged and deleted as mandated by the Cole Protocol, a UNSC-wide directive to all personnel to destroy any navigation data that might lead the Covenant to Earth or the inner colonies. And of course, there was a second step...

"Ready the self-destruct sequence," he heard himself say. "Standby to initiate."

And he'd so wanted to _live._ But it wasn't over yet. He'd make the Covenant work for their prize. As the dropship drew up alongside, he keyed in a new heading.

"Computer, standby for course correction on bearing two-zero-two-zero," he ordered. "Full burn."

There was a thump as the Covenant vessel nudged into his Longsword. With a clang that reverberated through the entire vessel, its docking collar found purchase, activating powerful electromagnets. The smell of cordite flooded the cockpit and the temperature grew noticeably warmer.

"Course correction! _Now!"_

He was tossed across the cabin like a ragdoll as the Longsword jetted forward with explosive force. It rocketed away from the Phantom, shearing the docking tube away in a shower of sparks and plasma. The collar broke away cleanly, and he had the satisfaction of observing several alien figures flung out into space. The fighter shuddered violently, but held together. With no counter-thrust to slow it, it hurtled toward the edge of the system at incredible speed. For a second he even imagined that he might outrun the Covenant.

THUMP.

The Longsword slammed to a stop. Unrestrained, he flew forward into the windshield, shattering his nose on impact. Blood spurted everywhere in the microgravity as purple light illuminated the cockpit and made his skin tingle. Another Covenant dropship had angled in from above and was using its gravity lift as a kind of retainer to bring him to a standstill.

He slammed his fist on the console and keyed up another random trajectory, using the last of his fuel. But before he could order the maneuver, the other dropship sidled up to take position in front of him, its plasma cannon glowing ominously in unspoken threat. They were taking no chances—blocking him in as they fired their gravity projectors in tandem, holding his Longsword in their vice-like grip.

The troop bay swung open and figures in midnight-purple vacuum suits swarmed out, streaming toward his helpless Longsword with plasma cutters in hand. He caught a glimpse of a scaly maw open in a roar of challenge as the alien floated toward him. _Jackals. _His stomach turned as a cold rush of fear flooded in. For sheer ruthlessness and cunning, the avian creatures had no equal in the Covenant. To be taken alive by Jackals was a fate unimaginable. One landed bug-like on the windshield and stared at him inquisitively with its reptilian eyes. Lockman hit it with a stream of sudsy cleaning solvent and the glass rattled with its answering scream.

He quickly polarized the windshield and kicked out of his chair. He was already flouting the rules by not self-destructing when faced with the very real probability of capture, but he'd already purged the nav database, and something inside of him refused to just lie down and die. A framed image of vintage actor Tom Cruise as a Naval aviator smiled roguishly down on him, as though approving the decision.

Fumbling with the weapons locker, he grabbed the M7A3 aircrew fighting weapon from the rubber shackles that held it in place. A stockless, cut-down SMG designed to prolong the life of stranded airmen shot down behind enemy lines, it was compact enough to fit in a pistol holster and fired special subsonic ammunition that wouldn't penetrate a spaceship hull. He also had his sidearm, a stainless-steel M6C magnum that he'd never fired apart from training.

Should he take weapon in each hand like a Spartan commando and mow the invaders down, firing from the hip with a knife between his teeth? The thought brought a grim chuckle to his lips. There were weapons enough for each member of the crew, but they were useless to him.

He glanced around the darkened interior of the Longsword, wondering what he might use for cover. Would the command chair stop a plasma bolt? His flight suit offered only the most minimal protection for his chest and groin. In the end, he settled for an open locker just aft of the cockpit and shut himself in, pistol pointed outward.

_Go away, _he thought, sweating profusely in the cramped darkness. _Nobody's home... _In truth, he was terrified. As a pilot, he'd encountered so many near-death situations that he'd long thought himself callous to mortal fears, but this was fear of a personal kind. Aliens were coming to kill him, and they _would _kill him, unless he could kill them first.


	2. Piracy and Jackals

**0340, August 13, 2552, Erandus System**

The eager Kig-Yar bumped and jostled in the cramped space, jockeying for position. Rez hissed, flaring his elongated crown of quills in warning. Ordinarily this would have been enough to quiet his insubordinate crew, but there was a blood frenzy in them. They squabbled and snapped at each other, eager to pillage the human ship and spill the blood of its crew.

"Soon! Soon, you miserable dogs! Shut up!" he cursed them, aiming a vicious blow at the nearest Kig-Yar's head.

Outside the crimson-lit docking tube, other members of the _Time of Harvest's _crew in vacuum suits swarmed over the hull of the derelict human fighter, guiding the flexible conduit by hand. More stood by with plasma grenades, ready to breach the hull of the angular ship should it attempt a second escape. They'd learned their lesson the first time. It had been a clever trick, but it would not work again. The _Harvest's _other dropship barred the way.

"Captain!" It was the Unggoy Deacon, a snivelling, spineless little creature whose superfluous manner was superseded only by its slab-jawed corpulence on the list of things Rez hated about it.

He made a show of deference to the little gnome, knowing it to be the Prophet's spy, though the contempt was evident in his voice.

"Yes, Deacon? What word of divinity do you bring us today? Does our piety lapse?" He mockingly drew a claw across his chest in a gesture of faith.

"I bring word from the Holy Prophets," the Unggoy huffed. "You are commanded to capture a human alive if possible, and return with it to the Holy City."

Rez bared his teeth and hissed in the Unggoy's face, spattering the Deacon with saliva. It wiped the spittle from its breath-mask with a scaly forearm and stared back fearlessly with its dull little eyes. It was all Rez could do not to draw his crystalline dagger and drive it into the creature's belly. The animosity between the two subservient species was long-standing.

"What are you saying, Unggoy?" he demanded, seizing the small creature buy the front of its tunic. "Do you think to give _me _commands?"

"No, Captain," the Deacon said quickly, lapsing into the broken speech common to Unggoy, "I only relaying the divine word of the Holy Ones!" It unconsciously mirrored the same gesture that the Kig-Yar had modeled, no doubt in complete sincerity, though Rez occasionally wondered if the creature might not understand more than it let on.

He snarled and flung Deacon away. In truth, a live human was a prize in itself, a veritable treasure trove of information, but his plans had not involved the long-term survival of any crew. But the Prophets wanted one brought back _alive. _Why? Disgusting, faithless creatures. Their very existence was an affront to the gods.

He told himself that it didn't matter. Whatever the case, he doubted that their motives toward the human scum were at all altruistic. No doubt the human would find death a mercy compared to whatever plan the San 'Shyuum had concocted for him.

"Captain," a Kig-Yar mercenary hissed, "A seal has been made."

"Excellent," Rez growled, motioning his subordinates forward to begin cutting through the human airlock. "Begin!"

Harsh blue light filled the corridor as crewmen with plasma cutters began to burn through the airlock cover. Another pair armed with pry-bars moved up and wedged them into the gap, straining with their sinewy forearms to widen it. With a groan, the door slid open and a rush of air whipped past them into the darkened human ship.

Rez flinched and instinctively crouched back, anticipating the slap of gunfire. None came. Just the sigh of air as pressure between the two vessels equalized.

"Forward!" he hissed, waving his glowing scimitar. "Take them!"

It was all the encouragement his shipmates needed and they surged forward into the human ship. Rez drew his own plasma pistol and motioned to the Unggoy Deacon to stay behind him, not out of any concern for its safety, but to ensure that the Prophets received a report that their instructions had been duly carried out.

From the airlock aft, it was a straight shot down the narrow corridor to the cockpit, but locked compartments and shadowy crawlspaces abounded. At each hatch and intersection, Rez expected to be met with a sudden volley of human gunfire, but none came. Every hatch was opened and inspected until only the cockpit hatch remained. It proved a difficult obstacle. It could not be opened with the provided handle, and Rez suspected an ambush.

He thought it likely that the humans were cowering inside, perhaps armed. A cowardly act, and a most irritating one. The hatch was a total bottleneck, half as tall as a human and hardly more accessible to a Kig-Yar. They'd have to proceed through one at a time, and the humans would surely have their weapons trained on the opening.

Rez cautiously put his ear to the heavy door, listening for movement. How many humans did it take to fly such a ship? How many would be armed?

He looked around at his small boarding party, and quickly calculated that a direct assault on the cockpit would be costly. Better that he should call for the Kig-Yar beyond the hull to cut through the bulkhead and asphyxiate any inside. But the Prophets wanted a human alive_._

Rez growled in frustration. If he might recall the crew of the second Phantom to join with his, they would surely have the numbers to take the cockpit, but he was sure that some of his own would be lost, and they were down several Kig-Yar crewman already. The Fleet Master would not be pleased.

"Open the door!" he howled, beating on the stubborn hatch with the butt of his plasma pistol.

The Unggoy shuffled nervously forward with his hands folded in consternation.

"Perhaps you should try a more reasonable approach, Captain," he offered carefully.

Rez rounded on him with the light of fury blazing in his eyes.

"What did you say, _Deacon_?"

"Well," the Unggoy continued, his voice wavering, "perhaps the humans might surrender themselves voluntarily if you gave them the chance. As it is written; mercy in measure may do for violence uncurbed... "

It was too much. Rez fell on him with a scream, striking him savagely in the side of the head. The rest of the Kig-Yar bristled, crowding in uncertainly as he continued to beat the helpless Unggoy until it slumped the the floor in a growing pool of its fluorescent blood. It lay motionless, unconscious or dead.

He rose, breathless and flushed from the exertion. His crew stared uncertainly, the threat of humans forgotten. The Unggoy Deacon lay unmoving at his feet. If the Ministry found that he had killed a Deacon in cold blood, he might be heavily fined, or worse, removed from his command.

Rez spat on the tile and wiped his maw with a scaly hand.

"The Deacon was killed when the human rammed us. His body was lost, but we, in good faith carried out the Prophet's instructions and chose to recover a live human of our own volition."

The other Kig-Yar murmured uneasily amongst themselves but none pressed the issue.

"The ship logs shall reflect this," he ordered. "The Deacon's last wish shall be granted. Now, to the spoils!"

He sidled up to the hatch and cleared his throat.

"Humans!" he screeched in a fair approximation of their language. "Humans! You are boarded and surrounded by our ships! The Prophets extend to you their offer of forgiveness! Put down your guns and come out and you shall feel their mercy!"

He listened. His Kig-Yar contingent shifted uncertainly. They too felt his apprehension about storming the cockpit, and were in no hurry to die.

"Humans!" Rez tried again, "Surrender and you will live!"

If he could get even one human to surrender, there would at least be one less inside to offer resistance and they would have their prize. He could suck the air from the cockpit then. He wished for a vacuum suit so that he could see their faces, eyes wide and bulging as they died.

But the human crew remained stubbornly silent. Rez began to wonder if they had not happened across a derelict ship, abandoned or with crew dead, running on automated systems. The humans were said to possess blasphemous artificial beings who could produce such feats. Rez cursed the lack of a portable life-scanner on their scavenger ship, a rudimentary piece of technology denied them by the Elites, curse them. Even the Brutes—

"Hello?" a shaky human voice called. Rez's head snapped up, eyes darting. It was difficult to pin down the direction of the voice, and he realized that it was coming over the ship's intercom system. He found a likely panel and after a moment's study, pressed the button marked 'transmit'.

"Humans!" he screeched, "Give up now or you will all die! Come out and you will live"

"Live?" The human sounded panicky and shaken. "How do we know you're telling the truth? How do we know you won't kill us?"

"Human!" Rez snarled, his patience almost expended. "If you do not open this door, we will—" He glanced at the dead Deacon. "As servants of the most Holy Prophets, we offer our word! How many are you?"

The human paused a moment, and when it came back its voice sounded a touch more confident.

"Six, all armed. I'm warning you, if you try to enter, we will destroy this ship and everyone aboard."

Some of the Kig-Yar with him looked alarmed. Rez roared his fury.

"Human! Look around you! You are surrounded by my ships and you are dead in space! The only reason you are not dead already is because I have ordered it so! Do you understand me? _I hold your lives in my hand!_"

There was silence for a long moment and Rez wondered if he'd overplayed his hand. He could not return empty-handed from this venture or the Prophets would surely see through his sham. He motioned the rest to make ready to enter the compartment. But the human voice returned.

"Hey, listen, man, I don't want to die today. If I come out, do I have your word you won't kill me?"

Rez spat in contempt. Humans were so pathetically easy to manipulate that it was hardly even a challenge.

"You have my word," he promised. "Come out now and you will live."

"Okay, I'm coming out. Please, don't shoot!"

Rez gestured at his crewmates to hold their fire as they trained their weapons on the door. To his surprise, the noise of a hatch swinging open came from behind, and he whirled, weapon raised. A human stood there, hands raised in surrender with a look of pure terror plain on its face.

"Don't shoot!" the human cried, "Please, don't shoot!"

"Stop!" Rez screamed, jabbing with his plasma pistol. "Sit down on the ground!"

But the human stumbled as he approached, half in a daze and white with fear, pointing with a shaking hand toward the cockpit door. Its other hand was obscured in the folds of its flight suit.

"Let me... They'll listen to me, they'll surrender! I can make them surrender!"

"No!" Rez screeched, grabbing a handful of the human's rough fabric uniform. "You will not—"

The human turned, and Rez saw the stubby black barrel of a firearm protruding from its sleeve too late to do more than raise his plasma pistol with a squawk of alarm. A conical gout of fire leaped from the weapon's muzzle and filled the compartment with deafening thunder that quickly turned into a hurricane-force gale as a weakened portion of bulkhead gave way under the fusillade and blew out to space.

Five of his Kig-Yar were instantly swept off their feet, beaks open in surprise as they and everything that wasn't welded down blasted out through the widening gap. The Longsword spun wildly, tearing away from the attached phantom and hurling the vacuum-suited boarders helplessly into space.

Rez dug his talons into the floor, screeching in terror as an impossibly strong hand clutched at him, drawing him hand-over-hand toward the two-meter wide hole through which air explosively vented. He glanced around desperately and spotted the human clipping itself to the bulkhead by a short length of rope, wrestling to wriggle into the cockpit against the torrent of air.

"Wait! Damn you!" Rez tried to scream, but found it impossible to draw breath. Choking and snarling, he made an attempt to reach the bulkhead, but the pull of the void was too strong. With a screech like metal rending, his claws drove a line of grooves into the floor. The Unggoy Deacon had revived, and it squealed and grabbed at him as it swept past, sending them both hurtling toward the breach. It clutched at him and he shoved it away, driving his needle cutlass into its back to send it flailing away into space where its methane tank exploded in a brief flash like a firecracker.

But by good fortune or providence, the Kig-Yar Captain's web harness snagged on some protrusion only meters from the brink, leaving him snapping wildly against the bulkhead like a flag buffeted by a stiff wind. There was no time to ponder the ignominy of his predicament and he clawed madly at the steel partition to find purchase for his claws. A cross-brace loomed above him and he reached for it, hooking it with the tip of his talon just as the harness broke free and slipped from his shoulders. Shuddering with the effort, he pulled himself hand-over-hand along its width toward the cockpit door that now seemed to be above him.

The human's boot was just disappearing through the hatch and his hand snaked out to grab it, digging in with his claws and eliciting a cry of outrage from above. An armored boot smashed down on his hand, but he clung all the tighter, scrabbling catlike to haul himself through the hatch. A gunshot snapped past and sparked off the bulkhead, sounding strangely hollow in the thinning atmosphere.

The Kig-Yar's vision blurred at the edges, but still he hung on, intent on survival by any means. There would be breathable oxygen in the cockpit. He would survive, and he would kill this human. His rage gave him strength and he reached up again.

Clawing and struggling with all his might, he managed to heave his torso over the lip, losing his grip on the human in the process. Vacuum sucked at him as he clawed upward, inch by inch. The human crouched over him, masked and gloved, cursing his jammed weapon. But Rez found himself completely unable to crawl any further, on the verge of blacking out halfway through the hatch.

The human shouted at him in strange, unintelligible vowels, kicking at his arms and face. Unable to shield himself with his hands lest he be ripped away by the vacuum, Rez growled weakly, fighting to stay conscious. The human could not close the hatch while he occupied it, they would die together. It would be a fitting act of vengeance.

As Rez lapsed into unconsciousness, he felt a sudden tug on his forearm as he was lifted bodily upward. Strangely, he felt no pain as he landed, though his arm bent awkwardly beneath him. A dull ringing echoed through the compartment as the hatch slammed shut, and immediately the pressure on his lungs eased.

He struggled to his hands and knees, glancing around for anything to use as a weapon, but the human was upon him again in seconds. A boot lashed out and struck him in the ribs, driving what little breath he had from his lungs. With a bellow, the human picked him up like a child's toy and slammed him forcefully against the wall, sending a debilitating stab of pain up his spine. He snarled and tried to break free of its grasp, but the human proved stronger.

The blows rained down savagely, and it was all Rez could do to curl himself into a ball and shield himself with his forearms. Spatters of purple blood drifted in the microgravity and unconsciousness beckoned him once more. The human's hands closed around his long neck and squeezed, trying to choke the life from him.

A mask of fury contorted his face. To die like this, at the hands of a human was unacceptable. He raked at his assailant's chest with his claws but found only a tough plastic plate. His field of vision shrank to a pinhole as blackness came roaring in.

"You will die—human," he choked. "My ship—my ship will—destroy..."

The hands on his throat slackened ever so slightly and Rez drew a great rattling breath, tongue lolling out as he fought to suck oxygen into his tortured lungs. Caught off guard, he stumbled along meekly as the human pressed him roughly against the center console, twisting his arm behind his back.

"You want to live?" the human barked. "That's a radio! Call your ship and tell them to back off!"

"They will not!" Rez growled furiously. "They will destroy you!"

The human ground his avian skull painfully against the console.

"Well you'd better try, or I'll kill you myself!"

Rez worked his tongue a moment and spat a long dribble of bloody saliva from the corner of his mouth.

The human screwed the barrel of a pistol painfully against his temple. "Make the call!"

"Heretic! Human filth! You will die!" the Kig-Yar snarled.

Out the window, an ungainly vessel appeared, seemingly cobbled together of spare parts and plates of purple metal. Motes of light flickered along its length as its plasma projectors charged and prepared to fire. Rez forced a smile and stared up unblinking into the human's visor. The _Harvest's _guns would take them both.

But the end never came. A bright flash erupted from the side of the Kig-Yar Corvette and for a moment Rez thought that the vessel had fired, but as secondary explosions ripped their way through the _Time of Harvest's _superstructure, his heart dropped into the pit of his stomach. He watched in stunned disbelief as the _Harvest _trembled and blew apart in a miniature supernova of plasma and fire.

_Impossible... _His head swam. Blackness beckoned and he welcomed it. He went limp and meekly surrendered to unconsciousness, aided on his way by a hearty bludgeoning from the human's pistol.


	3. Shootout on the Bridge

**0450, August 13, 2252, Position Unknown**

Lockman stared out the viewscreen, hardly daring to believe what he was seeing. The Covenant ship rolled and burned, small explosions rippling across its surface like strings of firecrackers. With the image-enhancing software in his HUD, the pilot was able to make out the winding vapor trail of a missile, highlighted in yellow like a thin trace of gold leaf against polished ebony. There was no telling where it had originated from. Whoever had launched the missile had gone dark, slipping back into obscurity against the backdrop of space.

He picked up the radio communications handset and it came away in his hand, sheared off from the console at its base. It was broken, just like almost everything else on the ruined ship. The sound of klaxons and alarm buzzers in the cockpit was deafening, the kind of electronic death-knell Lockman had never expected to hear with oxygen still in his lungs. Showers of sparks burst from the ceiling at regular intervals and a river of molten solder was bubbling up from the deck. Acrid smoke flooded the cabin. The Longsword seemed to be on the verge of total disintegration.

He glanced at the jackal, laid out flat in a pool of its own blood. Unconscious or dead, he didn't know. There were bigger problems to worry about.

"Computer!" he coughed. "Status report!"

"Hull integrity at thirty percent and dropping. Warning: catastrophic damage."

"No kidding!" the pilot yelled. Out the viewscreen he could see entire twelve-foot segments of hull plating from his own ship listing by. "Re-route all O2 and power to the cockpit and seal all non-essential sections!"

"Affirmative," the computerized voice droned, speeding up and slowing down seemingly at random as it struggled to cope with the sudden tax on its resources. "Cockpit sealed," it reported at last. "Cockpit hull integrity at ninety-three percent."

That was the first real good news of the day. The Longsword's deserved reputation for extraordinary survivability was due largely to the ultra-heavy armor-plating surrounding the cockpit, enabling it to take a head-on beating that would see lesser ships destroyed outright.

So far, it seemed to be the only thing holding the ship together. He would live, but he had no use for passengers. He turned his attention again to the jackal on the deck. The alien bastard had nearly cost him his life. The drain of a second set of lungs on the already critically overtaxed supply would be substantial. He didn't need a prisoner: better just to kill it. His hand twitched to the butt of his sidearm.

But before he could consummate the act, a sudden burst of radio static from one of the few undarkened consoles demanded Lockman's attention, and he fell over himself to get to the half-destroyed navigator's station where a functioning display still flickered. The navigator's chair broke away from the deck under his touch, and he hurled it aside, cursing the state of his ruined bridge. From there, he activated his emergency transponder, heedless of the danger, and crossed his fingers for a response.

The static intensified, became more regular, until Lockman swore he could make out a repeating pattern. Morse? The pattern was too rapid. Binary?

"Computer," he muttered. "I need a text translation of the signal on the _un-sec-def_ band." As an afterthought, he added: "And get the smoke out of here."

Vents opened up and the acrid smoke cleared. Text began to scroll rapidly on Lockman's monitor. He furrowed his brow to make sense of it.

_UNSC RF99(NAVSPECWAR)C-2-2_

_UNSCDEF R268[2/3bn] 2-1 B279_

_[THRT INTRDCTD]_

_[?]RDYSTATE]_

Something clicked in the pilot's skull. He realized that he was being hailed as only a machine could communicate, most likely by one of the _Miriam's _drone fighters. On its own, a drone was technically capable of performing basic combat-related duties, but they were held in universal derision by human pilots for their inane disposition toward brain-dead and self-destructive maneuvers.

Was it possible that one of the _Miriam's_ missile-armed patrol drones had managed to land the critical knockout punch against a covenant battleship at the precise moment its shields dropped to fire? It seemed incredible, and yet here it was. Lockman swore then and there that he would never be so petty as to mock a drone operator again.

"Hot damn," he muttered, breaking into an uneasy grin. "Saved by a bot."

Lockman caught a glint of reflected light off of the aircraft's stubby canards as the helpful drone moved in for a closer look. The viewscreen HUD automatically focused in on the contact and presented an image-enhanced readout. As he'd suspected, his screen showed an IFF tag identified as belonging to a Mako II-class assault drone, part of the _Miriam's _Special Warfare package, designed to provide near-atmosphere fire support for the ship's Orbital Drop Shock Trooper contingent.

The Captain had to have ordered the drone launched to supplement the ship's Longsword defenses. The Covenant must have missed it's small electronic signature in the pillage, perhaps mistaking it for a piece of space junk or debris from the destroyed _Miriam. _Not much use in a space battle, it still carried two standard ASGM-10 missiles for self-defense, and had chosen to use them at just the right moment to bring down a Covenant carrier. Dumb luck?

Lockman wasn't sure, but he chose to take it as a sign that his fortunes were improving. For a moment, he dared to believe that he might survive. The giddiness at his unexpected survival rushed to his head. Glowing with satisfaction, he drew his pistol and stood over his unconscious captive.

"Get that drone to stay on station," he ordered the ship's computer, fumbling with the pistol's slide. "Say goodbye, turkey," he muttered, flipping the safety off. He steadied his arm for a single shot to the alien's cranium. He did not notice that the Jackle's right eye was open a slit.

Before he could shoot, a clawed hand shot out and seized his ankle. Lockman gave a startled cry as he fell backward onto the deck, almost losing his grip on the magnum. Rez had only been feigning unconsciousness, and was in fact quite recovered from his earlier struggle. Now he had the element of surprise, and he fell on the human with furious intent.

Lockman shielded his face as the jackal tore at him with its claws. The sleeves of his flight suit ripped under the onslaught and deep, bloody furrows opened up on his forearms. He pushed back, trying to get out from under the murderous alien. Rez retaliated by opening his toothy maw and sinking his teeth into the human's neck.

Lockman howled and thrashed, trying to dislodge the alien's fangs from his throat. With a grunt of fury, he stuck his thumb in the jackal's eye cavity and applied pressure, trying to gouge out his assailant's eye. Rez let go with a scream and began to throttle the human. Now it was Lockman's turn to choke and sputter. The alien's slender claws wrapped themselves around the pilot's throat and squeezed mercilessly.

Lockman felt tears being forced from the ducts behind his eyes as his vision began to cloud at the edges. On even footing, he ought to have been able to take the diminutive alien in a fight, but here the jackal had the advantages of claws and razor-sharp teeth, not to mention wiry strength borne of rage. He yellled again as the jackal bit him in the face, taking a whole chunk of flesh in its jaws and tugging like it was trying to take his nose off.

Enraged, Lockman seized the back of the jackal's feathery crown and tugged on it, breaking the alien's hold. It squawked furiously and raked its claws across the pilot's face in three stinging grooves that immediately threatened to blind Lockman with blood. In a white fury, he brought up his knee and snatched the knife from his boot, driving it into the jackal's thigh in a rapid plunging motion.

Purple blood spouted, mixing with his own on the slick deck tile. He withdrew the knife and tried to stab the Jackal again, but the reptilian alien caught his knife hand by the wrist and held it, straining to force the blade back on its owner. Lockman grunted with exertion and fought with all his strength to keep the knife on target.

The Jackal forced all his weight against the human's arm, and the blade trembled in limbo. Lockman punched him across the face with his free hand, and in the sudden upset, the blade found jackal flesh, biting deep into the space beneath its arm. Rez's right arm instantly went limp, and he felt his entire shoulder go numb.

With a vicious snap, he bit the human on the hand, sinking his teeth all the way through the web until they met on the other side. Lockman bellowed and the knife clattered to the deck plate. He lashed out with his other hand and dealt the jackal a powerful open-handed blow across the mouth, sending it reeling in a spray of his own red blood.

Lockman was on his feet in an instant, nursing his injured hand. His head swam and his face smarted painfully from his wounds.

He looked around for the pistol, but it was lost or gone. From across the deck, Rez licked his lips, savouring the metallic taste in his mouth. He flared his spiny crown in challenge.

"Just die, you alien bastard!" Lockman snarled, putting up his fists and wading back into the melee. The jackal responded with a string of harsh consonants in his own language that Lockman correctly took for swearing.

"Same to you," the pilot grunted, laying in with his fists. Rez retaliated with his claws. Lockman got in a good hit but just about lost his balance on the uneven deck. The smaller jackal spread his claws and slashed at the pilot's unarmored regions, scoring blood again and again as he cut up the human's extremities, sustaining many bruises in the process. Lockman had had enough.

"Get offa my... _ship!" _he roared, bringing up his knee hard into the jackal's chest. The avian alien folded with the blow and collapsed panting against the bulkhead. Lockman staggered after him with murder in his eyes, but slipped on the blood-slick deck and went down hard, striking his head on a console.

He almost blacked out. The pounding in his head intensified and the world grew oddly quiet. He fought to stay conscious despite it all, knowing that to pass out now would leave him at the mercy of the jackal. Sucking in breath, he struggled to his hands and knees, fearing the worst.

But the alien seemed strangely hesitant to carry on fighting. He was clearly pained by the wound in his leg, and every time he tried to stand, he stumbled, hopping around like a wounded bird. It was almost a comical sight, and Lockman would have laughed had the pain in his side not reminded him that he was hardly the predator in this situation.

Then the jackal locked eyes with him and seemed to smile. Lockman was confused until he followed the alien's gaze. The stainless steel M6D magnum glittered dully on the blood-slicked deck at the jackal's feet. The human took a half-step forward and stopped. He raised his hands in a placating gesture.

"Don't you dare—"

Rez stooped and picked up the weapon. With a cry of triumph, he brought the heavy pistol to bear and fired. Lockman dove behind the navigational console as the magnum thundered in the confined space. A bullet careened off of the bulkhead and flattened itself against the ceiling.

Rez was surprised at the force of the recoil. The human weapon fired a very heavy round, and the shock of it jarred his aim badly. It was very different from the plasma-based weaponry he was accustomed to and the crude steel grip fit uncomfortably in his small hand. His injured right arm drooped slack and bloodless at his side, of no assistance to his aim.

Growling, he steadied his aim as best as he could given the circumstances and levelled the pistol at the console he knew the human to be hiding behind. He pulled the trigger and blasted a neat half-dollar-sized disc of metal into the base of the panel. Another shot yielded the same results. To his frustration, the hollow-point rounds would not penetrate even light cover.

Snarling his irritation, Rez began a limping stalk around the center island, knowing that the human could not hope to evade him in the cramped compartment. His satisfaction grew as he relished his adversary's inevitable demise. This might even prove entertaining.

"Coward," he hissed, using the humans' own language to better accentuate the being's growing terror, "Come out and die!" There was a flurry of movement at the corner of his vision and he snapped off a shot at the human's fleeing heels. The round smacked at the deckplate right behind him, and Rez laughed cruelly. The tables had turned!

Lockman slid into cover again, breathing hard as he ducked down behind an exposed piece of bulkhead. He was counting shots. The alien had three bullets left, by his reckoning. How long could he keep this up? Ducking from cover to cover, could he outlast his pursuer in a desperate game of cat and mouse? The Jackal's aim was getting better. The last shot had come uncomfortably close.

The alien laughed nearby, a creaky, rattling hiss that prickled Lockman's spine. He had to move—_now! _He exploded from cover, dropping into a stiff roll calculated to bring him under the jackal's gunsights and into the cover of the flight engineer's desk. It almost worked. The jackal had anticipated the maneuver, or something like it, and snapped off a pair of well-aimed shots the second the dark-garbed pilot appeared.

The roll threw off his aim somewhat, and the first shot went high, but the second creased Lockman's shoulder in a fiery line and deflected off his collarbone, narrowly missing his spine. The sheer force of the impact tossed Lockman through the air and he tumbled to a halt just shy of his target.

The pain made him sick, but the tip-tap of claws on the metal deckplate behind him gave Lockman the force of will to scrabble the remaining feet to safety on adrenaline alone. He made it under the desk and sprawled heavily onto his side. Sweat and blood pooled inside the plastic material of his flight suit and made it sticky. The shelter of the desk provided only illusory safety. He needed to move, but his tortured limbs failed him. He had no more strength left even to crawl.

He cursed loudly and sagged heavily on his haunches. Was this the end? Had he come this far to die, shot down with his own weapon in the darkness of his own destroyed ship? The ignominy of it galled him. He let his eyes roll up to the dark undercarriage of the desk and his cursing instantly turned into a prayer of thanksgiving.

There, taped to the underside of the desk in a battered old leather holster was a decidedly un-regulation silver revolver that looked like it had ridden straight out of the wild west. He'd found the flight engineer's personal holdout weapon. To Lockman, it looked as good as an MA5B and he seized it with gusto.

Rez had greatly enjoyed his sport of hunting the human pilot around the cockpit, but now his leg wound was troubling him and his frustration was growing. He desired to end the little game _now_, with a single shot or more, and then to prolong the human's suffering as long as possible in payment for every injustice the heretic filth had dealt him and his crew. He had seen the human drag itself beneath the console, and had seen his shot connect. He expected to find the human critically wounded and helpless and was prepared to finish it off without resistance. So when the human came up with a gun, he squawked in surprise and snapped off a shot without aiming.

The bullet went wide and Lockman felt something go steely in his mind. _That was your last shot. You won't get another._ He took aim from where he lay, arm braced and extended, intending to shoot for center mass. For some reason he'd never recall, he felt the need to drop the alien with a single shot.

The scene played out in slow motion. Even as the jackal ducked for cover, the barrel of the magnum came back up and Lockman barely had time to register the long, tapered black magazine protruding from the bottom of the weapon before the muzzle flashed again and a shot smacked the deck next to his head. _Extended clip,_ his mind registered, before he pulled the trigger and fired his own weapon with an ear-splitting bang.

The ensuing firefight was short and vicious with bullets careening off the bulkhead in every direction. Lockman was only conscious of pulling the trigger again and again until each of the six chambers clicked empty and he was himself again. There was no sign of the jackal. Ears ringing, the pilot hauled himself out from under the desk. He limped across the cockpit with the empty revolver hanging loose in his trembling hand.

There was only one place the jackal could be: behind the very same console in the middle of the cockpit that he himself had sheltered behind not moments earlier. Alive or dead, he didn't know. But he was through being pushed around on his own bridge. It was now or never. His heart threatened to beat out of his chest as he rounded the corner, but he had no regrets. This was it.

The jackal was there, slumped against the bulkhead and breathing raggedly, his purple blood pooling around him as spent shell casings sizzled in the bath. He raised his weapon weakly and pulled the trigger with an audible click. The weapon was as empty as the pilot's.

Lockman drew his knife. The jackal hissed and brandished his claws, struggling to rise a little before his wounded leg betrayed him. Lockman tried to focus enough to raise his weapon, but found that he could not. His vision swam as he rocked on his feet, barely able to stand.

The two combatants stared at each other for a long time. Finally, Lockman staggered back and slid down the wall, slumping to the floor directly across from the wounded jackal. He rested his head on the bulkhead, but did not drop his knife. The jackal hissed but made no move to rise.

"Yeah," Lockman groaned, removing his helmet to run a hand through his blood-slicked hair, "I hate you too."

Rez cocked his head curiously, but did not break eye contact. They sized each other up warily. Neither bore any illusions. This was no truce. The first to succumb to weakness would be the first to die.


	4. Abandoning the Ship

**0900, August 13, 2252, Position Unknown**

At some point, Lockman blacked out. Then he was back on Earth, and it was prom night. Except his High School had been replaced with the steel partitions of UNSC barracks and his childhood sweetheart had the scaly face of a jackal. He blinked to clear his vision, but that only made the edges of the room shimmy like a kaleidoscope image. The drink in his hand was the color of reactor coolant.

"_Keith,"_ the reptilian alien whispered his name, coyly flipping a lock of her strawberry-blond hair back over her shoulder. She held out her clawed hands for his and he took them, following her onto the floor for a dance. Other couples were moving around them, swaying in step to music he couldn't quite make out. He saw faces he recognized: Bly Cartman, his wingman. That girl from Club Errera, the one with braces. Fleet Admiral Hood. His old shop teacher.

Lockman felt self-conscious as he realized he was wearing his flight suit. He tried to excuse himself, mumbling something about a tie, but his partner gripped his hands tighter and whisked him into the center of the dance floor. Her face had morphed again. Now she was human, a pretty face with a tight-lipped smile and large, shining eyes. He wished he could remember her name.

They began to spin, pulling against each other, twirling faster and faster until all the world was a blur. The room seemed to go dim. Lockman felt as though he were spinning up like a helicopter, climbing higher, up through the ceiling, through the night sky and into the cold darkness of space. He shivered as the void embraced him.

A shooting star roared across the curvature of the earth, blazing up to meet him. He barely had time to blink before it hit him in the face. Stifling a cry, Lockman threw up his hands to fend it off. His hands connected with the missile and swatted it away. It was hard and plastic, cool to the touch.

The pilot's eyes fluttered open. The polarized visor of his flight helmet stared back at him, spinning softly in the air. Its small orange status light blinked forlornly. The gravity had failed, he realized idly. It took him a moment to remember where he was.

He started upright as he remembered the situation. Panicking, he tried to take a step but found himself straining at thin air, unable to make contact with the floor. He fluttered his arms uselessly as a wave of vertigo washed over him.

"What the hell?" he wondered aloud. It took him a moment, but he soon realized that he was floating weightless, upside-down. Instantly, his training re-asserted itself and he ceased his struggles.

He'd been trained for this, back on Mars, in a high-tech neutral-buoyancy tank. Moving in a zero-G environment took some practice, but it was doable. He took a calming breath and oriented himself. His feet were kicking up toward the 'ceiling' and his face hovered a foot or so from the deck. A supply locker had broken open. Bits of unsecured equipment drifted around the cockpit like a miniature asteroid belt.

The alien castaway was awake too, kicking and flailing helplessly in the middle of the room, clearly out of his element. There was panic in his eyes. Lockman laughed at his distress, feeling a wave of relief wash over him.

"Not so tough now, are you?" he taunted, eliciting a hiss from the jackal.

Lockman fixed his eyes on the nearest bulkhead and pumped his arms in an exaggerated 'swimming' motion. He winced as his shoulder wound threatened to send him back into unconsciousness, but he held on. It was slow going, but he didn't have to go far.

Stretching out his arm, Lockman caught an exposed grate with the tip of his finger and weightlessly flipped over to rest against the wall like a giant insect. He clipped himself to a handhold provided for just such a purpose via a lanyard on his flight suit and took a moment to orient himself right side up.

Pulling a single-use cartridge of biofoam from his waist-worn survival kit, Lockman pressed the blunt applicator wand into his wound and pulled the trigger, injecting a wad of sticky foam into the hole with the force of a pistol shot. The pain made his eyes water, but the discomfort gradually lessened as the topical anaesthetic went to work. He flexed his arm tentatively. The biofoam would patch the hole and keep him from bleeding out. His arm would give him no more trouble for at least another two hours. It wouldn't matter—he didn't have nearly that long.

He returned his attention to the flailing alien, who was still having no success touching down on the bulkhead only feet below him. Lockman snorted at the sight. Even if he'd had zip-cuffs, he doubted he could have restrained the jackal more effectively than it was now, suspended in zero-gravity. He decided to ignore the alien for the time being and focus on more important things.

"Computer," he called. "Give me a full status report." He dreaded what he'd find, but there was no way around it. It was like ripping off a bandage. Best to do it quick and all at once.

There was a terrible electronic gurgle over the cockpit speakers as the damaged AI struggled to speak. Lockman grimaced and cut the bridge speakers. Instead, he synced the process to his personal wrist-mounted tablet. Text scrolled sluggishly across the curved screen and he eyed it dubiously.

_Hull integrity at 18%. Cockpit sealed. All munitions expended. Oxygen scrubbers operating at 32% capacity. Battery at 13% capacity. Targeting Systems: offline. Navigational Systems: offline. Reactor: offline. Simulated Gravity: offline. WARNING: CATASTROPHIC DAMAGE._

The news was as bad as he'd feared and worse than he'd hoped. The Longsword was truly inoperable. Even the triple-redundant systems had failed. There was nothing left but steel support struts and armor plating. The fighter had become a shell of itself, little more than a cast-iron casket. And the air was almost gone.

"You dumb scaly bastard! This is your fault!" he snarled, jabbing an accusing finger at the drifting jackal. "Now we're both going to die out here."

It was Rez's turn to laugh.

"Fool! Human filth! You will die! I will enjoy your suffering!" He licked his lips.

"Yeah, not if you choke on vacuum first," Lockman muttered, feeling suddenly weary beyond relief. "We're out of air."

Rez paused in his struggling. He had not considered this. He took a measured breath and realized that the air was very thin.

"You lie," he hissed. "You have air!" He pointed to the human's satchel-mounted oxygen reserve.

Lockman shrugged. "Not enough for you." And not enough for himself, either. There was only enough oxygen in the small tank for thirty minutes of breathing, and he'd already used half. He picked up the trailing mask and took a long pull of sharp, sweet air into his lungs. His head cleared a little.

Rez flew into a rage, hissing, screaming and promising death and dismemberment. The human ignored him for the large part. There was no point in getting aggravated. They were both dead already.

"Save your breath," Lockman said quietly. "You'll live a little longer."

The jackal didn't listen or didn't care, carrying on with his vocal tirade until Lockman tuned him out. He felt incredibly tired, and not just from blood loss and lack of oxygen. He'd come to terms with his situation. Stranded this far from UNSC space, there was no hope of rescue.

He'd been saved out of the frying pan twice for no reason at all. He would die out here, succumbing to lack of oxygen, drifting forever in his cold metal tomb, perfectly preserved for all eternity. No one would ever find his corpse.

He thought of his parents back on Earth, getting a letter in the mail listing their son as MIA. He thought of the grief, the pain of _not knowing, _the eventual sorrow of acceptance as they realized he'd never be coming home. Not that there's be a home to go back to for much longer, Lockman thought bitterly.

The Covenant was coming. They'd find Earth, he was sure of it. Humanity was on the edge, pushed to the brink of destruction by the unstoppable Covenant juggernaut. Would they rally? Fight back and push the invaders from their homeworld?

He doubted it. The Covenant would win. He realized that he'd known it all along—that they'd all known it, that they'd been lying to themselves. There would be no return. The aliens were ruthless. Humanity would perish, right down to the last man. Perhaps some would survive in out-of-the-way colonies or aboard ships in deep space. But he knew it was only a matter of time before the aliens would hunt them all to extinction, purging the galaxy of humankind forever.

It was a bitter pill to swallow. He looked at the jackal and felt only bleak resentment. He couldn't summon the resolve to assault it again, much as he wanted to rake his blade across its wattled throat. It had demonstrated itself too strong an opponent in his weakened state.

So instead, he took to watching it struggle from half-lidded eyes, reclining against the bulkhead and taking occasional puffs from his oxygen tank like the Sweet Williams cigars that many UNSC officers enjoyed. The jackal was quiet now, tongue lolling out from exhaustion or lack of oxygen. Lockman wondered who would be the first to succumb; him or the reptilian alien? He remembered from his briefings the layout of the jackal's avian physique. They had large lungs, hinting at a superior blood oxygenating capacity. But he had his oxygen tank. It would be an interesting race.

Slowly, the cold set in. There was no atmosphere to heat, though the heaters struggled overtime to warm the tiny space. He shivered in his thin flight suit. The blood from his wounds was cold against his skin. Frost began to form on his upper lip.

The jackal was still, now, making a kind of wheezing noise as his chest laboured with the struggle of breathing. Lockman watched him wordlessly as he took a swig of water from his canteen. Rez looked at him sidelong, the rage in his eyes slowly cooling.

Rez was beginning to recognize his peril, and the human's infuriating silence only deepened his panic. He was sure that the human was holding out on him. If he could just get to the man, he could tear out his throat with his jaws and take the air for his own.

But how? For all his time as a spacefaring pirate, Rez had little experience moving in zero-gravity. Despite everything he tried, he remained suspended in place, slowly tumbling without purchase. The human was just going to sit there and watch him asphyxiate. It was infuriating.

He had to get the human to move within reach of his claws somehow. He racked his brain, searching for anything that might help him. He smiled subtly as the desperate beginnings of a plan started to form in his head. The wiliness of his own cunning pleased him to no end.

"Human," he rasped. It was exhausting just to speak. He did not waste his words.

Lockman looked up from where he sat. He made no reply. Rez was unsettled by the detached disinterest in the human's eyes.

"Human, listen to me. I know where to get air."

Again, Rez was startled by the human's lack of response. It's eyes were listless, focused on nothing in particular. He'd expected more appreciation.

"I can get air!" he repeated, more urgently. "Listen to me!"

This time, the human stirred. He cocked his head ever so slightly. Rez took it as an invitation to continue.

"There is air in my ship!" Rez said, referring to the tumbling radioactive hulk of the destroyed _Time of Harvest._

"Not when I left," the human chuckled mirthlessly, sounding strange and filtered through the mask on his face.

"No!" Rez hissed, shaking his head. "When ship destroyed, escape pods launch, empty or full. Have air, have..." he searched for the right word. "Shirts. Space shirts." He pointed to the human's crumpled garb with a clawed finger.

"Space _suits,_" Lockman corrected. "For turkeys, maybe." He shook his head. He rightly suspected a trap and wasn't buying it.

Rez growled at the insult, but then remembered that his survival depended on diplomacy.

"Not just Kig-yar suits," he explained. "Also Sangheili." Seeing the human's blank face, he added: "Suits for Elites. Maybe your size, much air. Air for days. Many days."

Lockman kept his face purposely blank, but inside, he was running frenzied calculations. If what the jackal said was true, it might be possible to find and dock with a covenant escape pod. That would mean air, power, and whatever slop stood for Covenant rations.

On the other hand, it might be a trick, a trap, or he might even crack open a pod full of pissed off jackals. But it beat the hell out of the alternative. What did he have to lose?

He didn't give the alien the benefit of a response. Instead, he powered up his tablet and instructed the Longsword's computer to begin a sensor sweep of the sector. A small UNSC defence force icon pulsed in the corner of the tiny screen as the computer completed its task.

The results of the scan came up. Lockman swiped through the table with his finger, identifying pieces of debris with efficient urgency. Most of it was junk, bits and pieces of the _Miriam _or debris from the asteroid field. He eliminated all such contacts. Covenant alloy was lighter, with a hollow interior, and came back with a very different radar signature. These he gave a more thorough examination, checking each in turn for signs of life.

He found one that fit the bill and turned his scrutiny upon it. It was roughly the right size and shape to be an escape pod, and seemed hollow right through, like a capsule. More importantly, it was moving. Moving slowly, he unhooked himself from the bulkhead and pulled himself hand-over-hand toward the viewscreen, careful to avoid the suspended jackal.

Rez noticed him moving and craned his neck to watch his passage.

"Where are you going?" he demanded. "Human! What are you doing?"

Lockman ignored him. He peered out the viewscreen, searching the backdrop of space for the mystery object.

"Locate object A32 and enhance," he ordered aloud. The Longsword's computer complied, highlighting the object in question and zooming in on it. Immediately, a picture jumped into focus. It was a capsule of some sort, made of purple metal and studded with tiny blue running lights. Lockman examined the object for a full ten count before he was satisfied that the object was indeed a Covenant escape pod. He'd seen them before, in his gunsights, on the rare occasion that his battlegroup was able to get the jump on a Covenant capital ship.

His pulse quickened. The pod was moving in a straight line, heading right past him on a trajectory out of the system. He had only a single unfired chemical thruster remaining. If his timing was good, he could intercept the pod as it passed and seize it with the Longsword's hydraulic grappling appendage. If he missed or overshot his intended target, there would be no second chance.

"Computer, plot me a course to objective and standby to fire chemical thrusters," he ordered. A small light above the dashboard winked an affirmative. Lockman pulled out his own scratchpad to plot the course himself as an added layer of redundancy.

"What is happening?" Rez could bear it no longer.

"Shut _up_," the pilot commanded, jabbing his stylus at the jackal like a dagger. "If I mess up these numbers, we both die."

He went back to his work, and Rez snarled, but left the human to his work, intrigued by this turn of events. He wondered if the human had actually managed to locate one of the _Harvest's _escape pods.

This had not been a part of the plan. Rez squirmed uncomfortably, knowing that there was no reason for the human to keep him alive if he managed to get into a pod. It would be child's play to abandon the Kig-yar in the drifting fighter, while he got away alive, basking in the austere comfort of the pod's breathable atmosphere.

The thought infuriated the Kig-yar pirate. He began to struggle against his invisible shackles again, this time carefully miming the human's swimming technique while his back was turned. If he could only reach the floor...

"Okay, stop." The human's voice cut through the thinning air like a knife. Rez froze, embarrassed to have been caught in his act.

"What do you want from me, _human_?" Rez spat, making _human_ sound like _filth_.

"I found a pod. You're going to help me crack it open. I don't speak chicken-beak."

"Why should I help you?" Rez asked venomously, finding it hard to appear dangerous when floating upside-down.

The human crossed his arms, unimpressed.

"You help me or I vent the ship and leave you for dead."

Rez hissed, but the logic behind the statement beat his pride. There would be opportunities to cut the human's throat yet. He'd play along, but the pilot would pay dearly for his insolence. Rez would see to that.

"Yes," he agreed, snarling out the words through clenched teeth. "Help me down."

The human laughed.

"Do you think I'm stupid?" he asked. "Not going to happen. You get to live on one condition: you're my prisoner now." He produced a roll of tape. "Bind your hands"

Rez flared his crown in fury and began his show of rage anew. He slashed with his claws, gnashed his teeth and sent spittle flying. Lockman flinched a little, but held his ground. "We've got two minutes before the opportunity is gone forever. If that happens, you'd better believe that I'm going to leave you. Think hard."

With a final scream of frustration, Rez admitted defeat. He seemed to deflate as his crown flattened against his head.

"Fine," he hissed. "Yes. I agree."

Lockman nonchalantly passed him the roll of tape. Humiliated, the jackal bit off a length and wound it around his own wrists. The tape was shiny like metal and stuck like glue.

"Tighter," Lockman commanded.

"Filth!" Rez spat.

"_Tighter,_ or I do your mouth too."

Grumbling, the jackal taped his wrists as tightly as he dared and made a show of trying to free them for the human's inspection.

Lockman nodded his approval. Then he turned his back on the still-stranded jackal and went back to his instruments.

"Hey!" Rez snarled. "Hey! Help me down!"

"Relax," the pilot muttered, staring out the viewscreen. "You'll be fine."

_Fool. _Rez could not resist a smile. His pointed teeth would make quick work of the tape as soon as his feet were allowed to touch ground. Then there would be a reckoning. He smiled at the thought of all the tortures he would inflict on the human pilot.

"You'll regret this."

Lockman ignored him. He was busy plotting a course. The computer's calculation agreed with his own. It was now or never. He keyed in a quick burn on the auxiliary console, for exactly 3.3 seconds, and hovered his finger above the ignition key.

He had not forgotten the drone. It hovered nearby, awaiting orders. Lockman opened a channel and spoke to it directly, giving it instructions like a particularly stupid child.

"Engagement order: cover Longsword Bravo-Two-Seven-Niner," he instructed. "Make ready to engage designated target." He highlighted the pod on the tac-com. "Stand by for strike order."

A small green light winked an affirmative. Lockman was taking no chances. If the pod woke up, he'd order the drone to blow it apart with its single remaining ASGM-10 missile.

There was only one thing left to do.

"Stand by to initiate self-destruct sequence." The Longword's computer complied immediately, objectively unaware of its impending doom.

"Hey!" Rez snarled, catching the exchange. "What are you doing?"

"Get some new material," the pilot quipped. "We're abandoning ship."

Much as it pained him to let her go, B-279 was already as good as dead. She wouldn't last much longer in her present state, and he was half-convinced that the sudden force of this last maneuver would blow her apart. Besides, it wasn't his home anymore. His family was gone. Only a few crumpled photos taped to crew stations gave testament to their former occupants—everything else was already space dust.

A buzzer sounded in his ears. The countdown timer on his tablet reached zero. Lockman slammed on his helmet and punched the 'execute' key.

"Stand by to fire chemical thrusters!" he ordered. "Now—gently!"

There was a bang and the ship jetted sideways, crablike. The hull creaked and groaned around him as the starfield whirled by out the viewscreen. Lockman had the momentary impression that he was riding atop a spinning plate before a sudden jolt indicated impact with the target.

Air began rushing out through new seams in the hull in alarming jets. Plates were crumpling outward before his eyes. Lockman realized that the Longsword was moments away from total decompression. He tightened his mask and got to work, eyes wide.

Two thumps reverberated through the hull, signifying the engagement of the Longsword's docking claws. Their powerful hydraulic motors rent metal, creating their own handholds as they grasped the Covenant escape pod in their vice-like grip.

Lockman popped the plastic cover off of the emergency docking controls and hammered the switch. A steel frame shot out from the Longsword's rescue hatch, slamming into the lifeboat and establishing a magnetic seal. The escape hood ejected along the rail with a pneumatic hiss, little more than a pressurized tube of orange fabric that a man could clamber through to reach a rescue ship.

The seal would not last long. Lockman had perhaps ten seconds to reach the pod. He dropped everything and bolted for the hatch.

"Hey! What about me?" Rez howled.

Lockman ignored him.

"You can't go without me! You need me!" the jackal cried. His pleading turned to cursing. "Come back! Heretic! Human scum!"

Lockman growled and turned back to grab Rez by the ankle. He cannoned off the wall and swung his entire torso to fire the cursing jackle like a softball into the hatch, shoving him headfirst up the conduit and diving in after him. He was just in time. Just as Lockman hauled himself over the lip of the lifeboat hatch, B-279 exploded like a silent thunderclap behind them.

The return of gravity went unnoticed as the sudden gale of depressurization tore through the pod and threatened to suck Lockman right back out into the void. The escape hood was gone in a blink, and Lockman would have followed if not for his death grip on the corner of the pod. Lying on his back, he planted his feet on the lip of the hatch, and held on for all he was worth. His breathing sounded impossibly loud in his mask, audible over the roar of escaping air.

The end never came. The pod's iris-shaped door snapped shut and the howling void was locked out. Lockman collapsed, utterly spent. His ragged breathing turned to gasping as he shook with relief. Quietly at first, against his will, he began to laugh, giddy at his escape.

Another laugh joined his. Lockman stopped. Rez leered down triumphantly, free of his shackles and pointing a plasma pistol down at him.

"Not tough now, are you?" the alien mimicked, a pointy smile spreading from ear to ear.


	5. Escaped?

**1045, August 13, 2252, Position Unknown**

Lying there on the opalescent deck of the alien craft, Warrant Officer Third-Class Keith Lockman, service number 21982-02238-KL realized that he had nothing left. There were no more cards to play. Try as he might, he could not deny the stark reality of the situation. No matter what he did next, he was going to get shot.

So he did the only thing he could and brought up his legs in a blur of sudden motion. He drove them as hard as he could against the bulkhead, and the resulting force of the action was enough to put his shoulders level with the surprised jackal's feet. He grabbed its ankles and tugged with all his might, trying to throw it off-balance.

There was a terrific crack and a blistering wave of heat as the plasma pistol discharged. A bolt of liquid fire splashed into his chest with the force of a punch. The agony was instant and greater than any Lockman had ever known. An inferno of sensation flashed over his chest, so hot it felt cold. His lungs were instantly seared as he let out a panicky scream.

Writhing in distress, he clawed at the thin armor plate on his chest, trying to detach it. The smell of burning plastic and his own singed flesh made the air rank. Arching his back spasmodically, Lockman fought with the plate release. His fingers were burned right through his flight gloves as he ripped the white-hot ceramic plate off and threw it away. His stomach turned as he saw what could only be his own blackened flesh tear away with it.

He sat up and gaped in horror at the charred hole burned through his flight suit. He could see right into his chest cavity. The pain redoubled and he screamed, long and loud in the enclosed space.

Rez almost dropped the plasma pistol, staggered by the unexpected attack and overcome by the sudden spectacle. The human had thrown off his aim, drawing the bolt to the most heavily armored section of its flight suit, and it was still alive, screaming in pain. Even the vocationally ruthless jackal felt a twinge of horror as he watched the human flop around, staining the deck with its blood.

Numbly, he raised the plasma pistol for a killing shot, intending to put the human out of its misery. The barrel came up, glowing fiercely. Lockman saw this and thrust up his hand as though to ward off the killing blow.

"_No!_" he rasped in a fierce baritone, clearly tortured by the ordeal of speaking. "Shoot me and I'll kill us both!" He thrust up his left arm and Rez could see a glowing computer screen attached to the underside of his wrist. "If I die, we both die!" he repeated hoarsely, before he was seized by a fit of racking coughs. Pink blood sprayed from between his clenched teeth.

Rez hesitated. The sincerity in the human's voice was apparent. Unconsciously, Rez looked over his shoulder, half-expecting to see the Demon lurking there in the shadows.

"My drone," the pilot rasped. "If I die, it kills the pod." He laid his finger on a button, as though poised over some sort of trigger. Convulsions seized him again and his expression changed to one of panic. "Help me!"

Rez's aim began to tremble. The Covenant escape pod had no shielding. He didn't know what a _drone _was, but something out there had destroyed the _Time of Harvest_, and it was no stretch of the imagination to think that it could do the same to the tiny pod if it answered to the human's call. He stood frozen, paralysed with indecision.

Lockman felt his extremities going numb. He was going into shock. It was taking all his energy to hold up the tacpad as his finger hovered over the 'fire' command. He knew that the drone was still out there, waiting for the cue to engage. All he had to do was press the button and it would shoot.

"_Help me, _damn it!_" _he wheezed, feeling his life force fading. But the drone still waited on his call. All it would take was a single command.

Finally, reluctantly, the jackal seemed to come to a decision. Moving jerkily, he popped open a compartment in the floorboard and rooted around for a full minute before withdrawing a canister made from the same purple metal as the interior of the lifeboat. Lockman watched from the corner of his eye as the reptilian alien unscrewed the top of the canister and poured some kind of luminescent blue glop over his chest. He felt as though he were inside a dream, watching the events play out from a spectator's perspective.

But when the liquid entered his wound, he snapped back to reality. It was ice cold and had the instant effect of cooling the fire in his chest. It rapidly numbed and soothed his wounds as it spread over his torso. The sensation was all at once refreshing and invigorating, like the best parts of cold water and strong coffee combined. It looked like grunt blood; the same vaguely luminescent blue color and consistency.

Next, the alien took out some piece of high-tech medical equipment. It was as purple as anything Covenant-issue, with a pistol grip and a focusing dish where the barrel would have been on a handgun. It looked like a weapon and Lockman began to rise, protesting weakly, but the jackal growled and pushed him down, none too gently. He pointed the device at the human's chest and a humming noise filled the pod.

Immediately, Lockman felt a strange sensation as the blue compound slathered over his torso began to harden under the dish's influence, forming a combination bandage and cast that sealed up the wound and stuck like a second skin. Was this the Covenant counter to biofoam? His hazy brain catalogued the information away for later.

He began to draw breath more easily and sensation returned to his extremities. Lockman didn't know what the jackal had done to him, but he sure wasn't about to show his thankfulness. He put out his hand and squarely shoved the alien away. Rez hissed and bared his teeth, but didn't retaliate.

"That's right, you ugly bastard," Lockman croaked, tapping his armpiece for emphasis. "Thanks for the help. Now piss off."

Rez growled but said nothing. He looked down at the human pilot hungrily, his rage rising like a red tide. He wanted to reach down and tear the human's throat out. He could do it before it could reach its arm-mounted computer, he was sure of it. But what if it had some other means of signalling its invisible wingman? What then?

With a menacing snap of his jaw, Rez retreated to the other end of the pod and sat down on his haunches. The human stared right back, defiant as ever. Rez felt a deep spark of loathing ignite within him. This pathetic lesser being had eluded him twice and humiliated him in front of his crew. It was a sore blow to his pride. Before the night was up, he promised himself that he'd have torn out the human's throat and decorated the small pod with his entrails.

The thought brought a hiss of mirth to his lips, causing the human pilot to glance up with a questioning look. Rez didn't even look at him. He busied himself scheming, thinking about the myriad ways he might end the human's life without placing his own in jeopardy.

Lockman watched him warily, guessing the jackal's frame of mind. He held his arm computer across his lap like a rifle, ready to snap it up at the slightest provocation, but Rez made a show of disinterest, yawning and stretching theatrically. It was then that he re-discovered his knife wound.

A slight twinge of pain shot up his arm as the shallow wound reminded him of its presence. He winced, but mobility was already returning to the limb. Kig-Yar were fast healers. He'd soon make a full recovery. He tested the appendage warily, opening and closing his claw for inspection. A soft hiss of pain escaped his lips as he overdid it a little. He tried to hide it by extending into another stretch, but the human wasn't fooled.

"Got you good, didn't I?" the pilot taunted.

"Human filth!" the jackal retorted, just to keep up appearances. "You die!"

Lockman shook his head wearily.

"I've heard that one before. Got any new material?"

Rez wasn't sure how to reply. His knowledge of the human's guttural language was somewhat lacking. He settled for a menacing leer.

"Okay, here's one," the human continued, seemingly unaffected. "So there's two brutes and a jackal out in a field. It's thanksgiving. What are they having?" He tried to nudge the jackal with his foot. Rez drew away, repulsed. "Come on, guess."

Rez made no reply.

"Turkey dinner," the pilot chuckled, relaying a joke he'd read scrawled on a latrine wall aboard the _Miriam_.

Rez didn't get it, but he understood the tone of the joke just fine. With a snarl, he stooped and picked up the plasma pistol again.

"Tough guy, eh?" Lockman chuckled, bringing up the glowing display on his wrist for the third time that day. Its small LCD screen hummed with quiet intent. "Go on, try it. I dare you."

The two combatants stared at each other for a long time, neither breaking eye contact. For a moment Lockman feared that the alien was going to call his hand. His pulse quickened and his finger trembled on the rubber button that would seal both their fates.

But the jackal simply popped the top off the plasma pistol, field-stripping it. He shook out the plasma core into his palm for inspection. His eyes peered over the top of the now-useless weapon and he grinned toothily, obviously amused by the human's distress.

Lockman shook his head incredulously.

"You rotten little turkey-legged bastard," he muttered. The pounding in his chest slowly subsided. He allowed his head to rest back against the bulkhead, momentarily subdued.

Rez said nothing, but continued to tinker with the inner mechanisms of the plasma pistol. Apparently satisfied, he replaced the plasma core and snapped the lid shut. It whined with renewed energy, ready to fire. He crossed his spindly arms behind his head and closed his eyes, leaning back against the concave wall of the lifeboat, daring the human to respond in kind.

Lockman watched him uneasily, certain that the danger had not passed. The jackal was just play-acting, he was sure of it. It was playing mind games with him, waiting for him to drop his guard. He knew that its motives in aiding him were not at all selfless. For all he knew, the compound coating his chest was poisonous to humans.

At least it had stopped the bleeding. And aside from a little pain when he turned his torso this way or that, he actually felt pretty close to nominal. That was really strange, considering that not ten minutes ago, he'd had a fist-sized hole burnt right through his chest. A cautious probe revealed that the pliable, somewhat-sticky 'dam' was holding, appearing especially thick around the place where the entry wound had been. It was cool and smooth to the touch, like rubber cement.

He wondered if it was a temporary plug or if the compound might have some other virtue as a healing agent. If anything, it would be a good idea to hold onto a little of whatever was in that canister to hand over on his return to the fleet. The spooks in ONI might get a kick out of it.

That raised another question: where was the pod in relation to human-controlled space, anyway? He had no idea of the pod's current location, and without any kind of instruments, there was no way of telling. Based on the pod's rate of speed and trajectory, he estimated that it was well on its way out of the sector by now. But which way? Towards earth and the inner colonies or away from it?

He guessed that the Covenant escape pod had launched at the nearest celestial object of any significant mass, the same way UNSC lifeboats were programmed, but there was no way of telling if his maneuver in the Longsword had altered that trajectory. Across the vast distances in outer space, a single degree's difference could mean overshooting the target by hundreds of thousands of miles. If the lifeboat was of the 'dumb' variety, without its own maneuvering capacity, they could very well be hurtling off into deep space or even straight at a star.

The thought made him apprehensive. For a pilot, sitting by as a helpless passenger was as close to torture as anything the Covenant could devise. Lockman scanned the pod, looking for anything recognizable as a flight stick or a control console.

His search turned up nothing. The walls of the pod were perfectly smooth and made of the same purple metal as all Covenant ships, rounded out in a half-oval arch that met only about a meter above the flat, equally featureless deck. There was only one small, circular window, about the size of a human fist sunk into the exit hatch at one end of the cylindrical pod. Illumination seemed to come from the walls themselves, emitting a faint, pinkish light.

The jackal sat against the opposite end of the pod, only a scant few feet from where Lockman lay. From end to end, he estimated the pod to be about twelve feet across and only half that in head room. The only break in the apparently seamless construction was the lip of the open supply locker, on the jackal's side of the pod. He itched to have a look inside, but he doubted that the jackal would comply.

He wondered if the flight controls might be inside another hidden panel, or if navigation was autonomous. That would say a lot about the Covenant's baffling propensity for the automation of even simple systems. They didn't trust their own people to do anything more complex than opening a door. They had those creepy-looking engineers for everything else.

Not taking his eyes off the jackal, Lockman concentrated on the motion of the pod, listening for the sound of propulsion. There was nothing, not even a whisper. If the pod was travelling under its own power, it was by means of a propulsion system that Lockman didn't know about. This was worrisome. If the pod was on a random trajectory, they could be pass right through a high-traffic shipping lane and out of the system without ever knowing about it.

At least there was gravity. He could feel it in his inner ear. It was a little lighter than what he was used to on a UNSC ship, but it was leaps and bounds ahead of the artificial micro-gravity aboard his Longsword fighter. The pod wasn't nearly large enough to support a centrifuge, but the Covenant had always been ahead of the UNSC with gravity technology.

As he thought, his attention drifted back to the panel in the floorboard. What if the controls to the pod were inside? Curiosity got the better of him. He needed to have a look. But how?

Frustration boiled up inside of him as he realized that it was impossible. There was no way he was getting the jackal to swap him places, and in his current weakened state, he didn't have a prayer of overcoming the alien in a struggle. There was nothing to do but wait.

He slumped back against the bulkhead with a defeated sigh. For lack of anything better to do, he decided to antagonize his fellow castaway to see what kind of reaction he could produce.

"Hey," he called. "Hey, ugly."

The jackal fixed him with a murderous glare. Lockman carried on, undaunted.

"How'd you get into this business, anyway? It wasn't for your aim, that's for damn sure."

The jackal looked at him strangely for a moment, and then spat wetly on the deck. The plasma pistol in his claw started to glow with an overcharge.

"Hey!" Lockman yelled, raising his hands. "Easy!" He tapped his tacpad with a gloved finger. "Remember, you shoot me and we both go _boom, _okay?"

"I don't care!" Rez barked. "Sit and shut up!"

"Fine," Lockman grumbled, keeping his hands spread in a placating gesture. Still, he complied and lapsed back into silence. He had no intention of getting shot again if he could help it. Rez lowered the pistol, but did not relax, watching him closely.

Lockman rubbed his temples. Obviously, the jackal was not going to let him get to the supply cache. It vexed him, but there was nothing he could do about it. There was always the drone, of course, but to make good on that threat would kill him too. Like it or not, it looked like he was stuck where he lay.

His stomach rumbled at the thought, and he realized that he had not eaten since he'd been frozen down for cryo six days ago. You were supposed to go into the tube with an empty stomach, but he'd risked a breakfast bagel, privately musing on the pastry's fate as the cold mist had enveloped him, wondering whether or not it too would remain suspended in time, continuously occupying his gut. Now he was beginning to feel ravenously hungry as the stress of the last 24 hours caught up with him.

He had a few ration bars in his flight suit, and he ate one, but the tasteless chewy flesh of the mystery substance was cold comfort and did little to fill the emptiness in his stomach. He felt like grumbling along with it and turned his ire on the jackal.

"Hey, white-meat," he grumbled. "Where you from?"

The jackal cocked its head in apparent confusion, and he could tell that there had been another breakdown in communication.

"What planet you from?" he tried again, trying to provoke a reaction. "I'm Keith. You got a name, scaly?" He held up a finger in mock concentration. "Wait, I've got it: '_Ragh-graaah-rah' _or something, right?" he said, doing his best raptor impression with curled fingers. "'Shoots-for-Shit'?"

Rez did not take the bait. He knew that the human was trying to rattle him. It was pathetic, really, and it would not work. He idly tightened a screw on the plasma pistol with one of his claws.

"I betcha you've got one of those dumb circus names they give you, right?" Lockman persisted, trying to get a rise. "Bip or Flip-Yap or Fappy or something? That's what I've heard, anyway. That's what the little fart-sniffers call each other," he said, referring to the grunts and their methane-filled backpack tanks.

That got a reaction. Rez leaped to his feet and was across the pod before Lockman could react. In an instant, the jackal had his razor-sharp claws digging into to the human's throat. The other hand caught Lockman's wrist in a grip like iron. Rez screamed his fury directly into the pilot's face, deafening him and spattering him with strings of spittle.

For the first time, Lockman felt true fear. He had not realized the jackal's strength. His hand was hopelessly pinned at his side and he could feel the tips of claws like knives against his throat. An inch further and his throat would be cut. He froze, not daring to move a muscle, completely at the alien's mercy.

Rez drew in breath, hyperventilating with fury. He _longed _to dig his claws into the human's flesh, to bleed him slow and drag him across the deck. But as he stared into the human's watering eyes, he saw for the first time a real glimpse of panic and fear. The human's shield of bravado had dropped and bared his naked terror for Rez to see—and that was the greatest victory of all.

Rez stared wordlessly into those green-flecked eyes for a long time, drinking in the pain and the fear. The tables had turned. He held its life in his claws. To his great pleasure, he noted that this human, _Keeth_, was actually trembling. Such a show of deference should not go unrewarded.

"I am _Shipmaster _Rez_. _Don't _ever_ speak to me of Unggoy," Rez hissed, his harsh voice dripping with menace. "Or I _will _kill you."

With that, he slammed the human's head against the bulkhead with a satisfying _clunk, _and turned to go. He felt the human's eyes on him as he went, and the pleasure he gleaned from the interaction could not be understated. Positively glowing with cruel satisfaction, he returned to his place and sat down.

Lockman could only pant and feel the bloody grooves on his neck with a trembling hand. Relief flooded over him as he realized he'd just dodged a hell of a bullet. The jackal could kill him as sure as breathing—he'd just demonstrated that. But why hadn't he? Why not just finish the job?

Was he stuck in a pod with the jackal equivalent of a psychopath? He had to consider that a possibility. If that was the case, his life could be in danger every second the jackal remained alive. He'd have to kill the other occupant somehow.

He pursed his lips grimly as he thought about how this might be accomplished. He mentally castigated himself for his stupidity. What had he really expected? Peaceful coexistence? That the threat of the drone would keep the other in line? _Stupid._

But there was another option, maybe. He remembered the venerable words of Roosevelt's timeless foreign policy speech: _speak softly, and carry a big stick. _Well, an anti-ship missile was a pretty big stick. Maybe it was time for a little diplomacy.

"Listen, turkey—Rez," he began, when he felt well enough recovered, keeping his finger on the 'shoot' button, just in case, "You don't like me, and I sure as hell don't like you, but if you ever want to make planetfall again, you need me."

"I need you _nothing_," Rez spat.

"Let me put it this way," Lockman said, gingerly touching his chest. "Me—pilot. You—not pilot. Get me? We're not going anywhere at this rate. We're dead in space, and chances are, we'll run out of food and air before we get picked up. It's no good just sitting around waiting to die."

Rez said nothing. Lockman could not tell if it was thinking about his words or just being obstinate. He tried again, plying the jackal with reason.

"Do you want to die out here? We can _both _make it, but I need your help. I can probably fly this thing, but I don't know where the controls are." _Fly it straight to the nearest UNSC outpost, _he didn't add.

"No controls," Rez said plainly.

"What do you mean? Are you saying there are no controls or that you won't let me use them?" Lockman persisted, becoming more frustrated by the minute.

"No controls," Rez repeated, opening his scaly maw in an approximation of a grin.

"_Goddamn it!__" _Lockman cried, slamming his fist on the deck. The jackal was toying with him again. He was beginning to hate the creature all the more, if it were possible. The jackal just grinned at him, unblinking. Lockman wondered if it knew something he didn't, or if it was just being a stubborn bastard.

He groaned and rested his head against the wall in defeat. He'd never felt so bone-weary in his life. The urge to sleep was almost overpowering. He knew that the jackal was probably waiting for him to succumb so it could slit his throat without resistance, but to his surprise, he found he didn't care. He'd been through so much to get this far, and now there was nothing more he could do. Live or die, it was all the same.

"Do what you want," he muttered, too tired to feel angry. "I'm going to sleep."

His last waking memory was of the jackal staring at him quizzically. He had the distinct impression that it was appraising his worth. With that image in his mind, he shut his eyes and knew no more.


	6. Waking Up Again

**1330, August 13, Position Unknown**

Lockman startled awake, flinging up his hands to shield himself from a blow that never fell. He blinked himself alert and was surprised to find himself lying on the floor of a purple metal chamber, not feet away from a leering alien maw full of sharp teeth. He gave a cry of alarm and went for his sidearm, only to find the magnum missing from the plastic loop at his waist.

Then his consciousness reasserted itself, and he was reminded that it was only the jackal. The thought brought a mirthless chuckle to his lips. _Only the jackal. _Just a member of the ruthless and oppressive alien entity bent on humanity's destruction. Now they were sharing a space barely larger than an ODST drop pod. Stranger things had happened, he was sure.

More surprising was the fact that neither had yet killed the other, though not for lack of trying, he was reminded, wincing as he flexed his torso a little. The sticky Covenant dressing seemed to be holding, but the pain in his shoulder was telling him that it was time for another application of biofoam. In addition, his stomach was protesting its emptiness again and his mouth was painfully dry.

He checked his watch and saw that several hours had passed. Casting a wary glance across the aisle to the motionless jackal, he confirmed his suspicion. It was asleep, or pretending to be. The urge to wrap his hands around its skinny, birdlike neck and throttle it was attractive. Lockman had done the same to a good many wild fowl back on Earth before enlisting in the UNSC as a scrawny, stubble-jawed seventeen-year-old.

They'd made him a spaceship mechanic and sent him off to fight the alien menace for three square meals and thirty-six dollars a day. When he showed promise, they'd made him a Corporal. When the Covenant started chewing through aircrews by the hundreds of thousands, they'd made him a crew chief. And when his pelican took a hit that killed the flight crew, _that_ had made him a pilot.

So after he'd managed a crash-landing that saved an Admiral's kid along with the dropship's Marine payload, they'd made him a WO-1, and sent him off to flight school. They'd called him a hero after that—awarded him the Navy Cross and given him a bird to fly. And none of it, not the medals, not the men who'd never draw another breath, not the heroes or the sacrifices or the glassed worlds—none of it would ever matter if the scaly bastard at the other end of the lifeboat got his claws on Earth.

Lockman's palms itched and flexed with the desire to place themselves around the jackal's throat. But he was kidding himself if he thought he had the strength left to put up a struggle. He was weak and tired from the fighting and the wounds he'd already sustained. And the jackal still had a plasma pistol.

Focusing all his hate into a laser-fine cone of loathing, he roved the jackal's slumbering form with his eyeballs, taking the time to know his enemy. Its bare limbs were thin and lacking definition, like a famine victim. The skin over them was mottled and sallow, an unhealthy ashen color that lightened around the joints as though stretched too thin in places, and sporadically dotted with shoals of scales. The skin on the undersides of its arms was bare and scaleless, Lockman noted with disgust. Really, nothing about the alien could be said to be pleasant, from its lidless orange reptilian eyes to its yellowing teeth and the smell of rotting meat on its foul breath.

It wore the standard purple-grey jumpsuit of all space-faring jackals he'd seen, and he wondered if it was the Covenant issue crew uniform like his own flight suit. There were no distinguishing marks or indication of rank on the uniform, unless the holographic disk of purple light seeming to serve as its belt buckle were such a device, but from its crown of dirty feathers, Lockman guessed it to be a Major at least, the Covenant equivalent of an SNCO. A bouquet of sharp brown claws at the end of its awkward appendages would have made grooming difficult, perhaps explaining the foul odor that lingered around it. The alien would not be winning any beauty contests.

Lockman shook his head, wondering what unfortunate evolutionary quirk could have led to such an ungainly creature. He tried to imagine a planet full of the ornery, hopping creatures, and found that he couldn't. He wondered if they found each other attractive or if they courted only by virtue of necessity.

As though sensing his scrutiny, the jackal stirred, and opened one translucent eyelid a slit. Lockman feigned sleep until the jackal's rasping breath changed tempo back into a resting rate again. So it really was asleep. He could safely use the time to take care of a few things.

Opening his thigh pouch, he fished around for his constant companion, a single-use aircrew survival kit. The lumpy foil-wrapped package was pretty uncomfortable on long periods behind the stick, but now he was immeasurably grateful for its presence. He tore off the foil wrapper with his teeth and spread the contents of the pouch over the deck plate. It contained a few basic necessities essential to survival: a little food, some water, a first aid kit and a few other oddities. All the comforts of home, and you could even boil water in the pouch.

There was a small amount of distilled drinking water in a see-thru plastic squeeze bottle with a miserly little spout that ensured only a few drops could be produced at a time to avoid water waste. He put it to his lips greedily and drained half the bottle in a single pull. He smacked his cracked lips at the flavor. He hesitated for only a moment before he finished the rest. He was already badly dehydrated—it would do him no good to ration the stuff.

The urge to urinate came immediately after. He eyed the graduated bottle dubiously, but set it aside for the moment. While the process of water 'reclamation' was technically advisable, it was generally pretty unpleasant. His experience in SERE school told him it was better to exhaust all other avenues first.

He unwrapped another of the flavorless ration bars and ate it in two bites. They were bland and utterly unpleasant, but they seemed as good as a feast to the starving pilot. He grimaced at the plastic texture. High in calories, his small stash would keep him on his feet for a few weeks, provided he could find a source of water, but they'd never worked out the appalling aftertaste, somewhere between cold bologna and rubberized plastic. "Difficult to chew" was an understatement. A baseball glove was more palatable. Maybe he could slip one to the jackal and see if it would choke to death.

The thought brought a chuckle, and he immediately regretted it. A stab of pain shot up his arm and swirled in his shoulder area, making his eyes water. He ground his teeth and let out a soft hiss of pain. It was his shoulder. It was protesting the abuse of the past six hours. He really needed to have a medic look at it, but he wasn't about to ask the jackal for any more 'help'.

The wound was turning an unhealthy shade of green and his left bicep was grotesquely swollen. It looked as though fragments of the bullet were still lodged under his skin. No amount of biofoam was going to fix that, and he wasn't about to go prying around his shoulder with a pocket knife unless his life hung in the balance. What he really needed was an auto-surgeon aboard a UNSC vessel, but those were in short supply at the moment.

He applied another biofoam dressing anyway, the last of his supply. The pain abated, sinking back beneath the surface of his consciousness as a dull throb. He flexed, rolling his shoulder gingerly, feeling the tendons respond. There didn't seem to be any nerve damage, which was lucky.

He resealed the shoulder section of his pressure suit, taking note of the damage that the jackal's claws had wrought. Now the dark green rubberized fabric would never hold atmosphere again, but at least the inflatable air bladders were still intact, making sitting on the hard metal deck at least bearable. Looking around, he didn't see any crew amenities, not even so much as a crash couch.

He shook his head in bemusement. Why keep a lifeboat in such an austere configuration? There was something to be said for frugality, but this was taking it to the level of the absurd. The pod was little more than a metal coffin for its occupants if recovery wasn't swift.

It was almost as though this particular lifeboat hadn't been intended for use. It wouldn't surprise him: it was just another example of Covenant hubris thinking they'd never need it. If the ungainly Covenant ship had been crewed by jackals, as Rez had said, it was entirely possible that the pod had simply been stripped of any articles of material value before being sealed shut and forgotten about. Jackals were notorious scavengers.

Lockman wished again for some means—_any_ means—of telling the pod's heading or position. It seemed to him a baffling design oversight not to include any kind of controls or computer displays for the benefit of the occupants. He was used to the often obtuse triple-redundant systems found aboard UNSC vessels, and the idea of a blind ship unnerved him on a personal level.

He stole another glance at the jackal and saw that it was still apparently asleep, slight chest rising and falling in gentle motion. A wild fancy to sneak over and steal away with his captor's plasma pistol crept into Lockman's brain, but he quickly dismissed it. The jackal had one long claw looped through the trigger guard of the weapon, and he suspected that a failed pickpocketing attempt would have disastrous results.

Moving slowly, as not to arouse suspicion, Lockman brought up his tacpad and flipped through the available options. He had no new messages on his shipboard messaging client, which was unsurprising, considering that the _Miriam _had been destroyed along with everyone aboard who might have been inclined to message him. He checked the ships logs out of habit and found that it was nearly mess time. More was the pity.

He was still picking up ghostly pings from the MAKO drone, slowly decaying now as the solar radiation ate away at its unshielded components. The drone was wandering around like a lost child, sending out endless requests to be tasked. Lockman lacked the security clearance to take direct control of the drone, even if he'd had the the facilities, but as part of a Special Operations wing, he had the authority to issue a few basic commands in combat, though the drone was flying under its own limited guidance at the moment.

Out of curiosity, he brought up the _Miriam's _unclassified cargo manifest and flipped through the virtual pages until he found an entry for what could only be the drone, a MAKO II-class high-atmosphere ELINT support asset, callsign: "LUCKY LUKE." It had certainly lived up to its namesake, Lockman thought. Killing a Covenant warship, even a small one, with a single missile was _very _lucky. And so was he, by all accounts.

With a deep sigh, he snapped the cover over his tacpad and shut it off to conserve power. The jackal did not stir, apparently deep in slumber. But the tone of its breathing had changed, sounding shallower, and more forced. It was awake and pretending to be asleep, probably watching him through its thin slit eyes. The thought irritated Lockman. He took a deep breath, held it in for a three-count, and then let it out in an explosive yell that would have impressed his RDCs back at NTC New Harmony. He just about threw a lung, but he got the desired result.

Rez shot to his feet in outright alarm, hitting his head on the bulkhead as the human yelled something like '_HOO-YAH' _in a voice that sounded like the second coming of the forerunners. His panic turned to rage and then sudden confusion as the human exploded into a coughing fit interspersed with bouts of pained laughter. A few laconic air bubbles strained at the liquid contact bandage on his chest.

"_What!" _Rez hissed, completely unamused. "What?"

"You're one dumb Covie son of a bitch if you think you're fooling—fooling..." Lockman grunted, before doubling over for a renewed bought of violent coughs. A few flecks of dark blood sprayed the front of his uniform.

Rez trembled with pent-up aggression, wanting to bludgeon the human with the butt of his plasma pistol until its skull split, but in the human's current state, it was a reasonable assumption that the message would be lost in translation. He settled for harsh laughter, mocking Lockman's pained gasps.

"Does it hurt? Yes?" He chuckled, licking his lips in amusement. "Now be quiet! Or I give you another one!"

Lockman made a lewd gesture, still quite unable to speak. There was froth on the corner of his lips and it sounded like he was trying to cough up a lung. Rez watched him struggle with breath for a long time, trying and failing to distill pleasure from the spectacle. For some reason, the sight made him uncomfortable. Humans were disgusting, this one made doubly-so by its feeble display of weakness.

Rez offered only a single, half-hearted kick at the limp human's stomach, before returning to his place. He watched laconically as the human recovered its breath and meekly returned to sitting upright against the opposite wall. Its breathing was ragged. His own knowledge of human anatomy was very limited, but it sounded as though the human had a punctured lung.

Despite himself, he hoped it would survive. Its dying didn't fit into his plan. Absently, he glanced out the pod's single tiny window, searching the stars for movement. Somewhere out there was the rest of the battlegroup, and they'd surely have learned of his ship's destruction by now. The grim Sangheili Fleetmaster in charge of the small fleet would not be pleased at the loss of even such an insignificant asset, and other any other circumstances, things probably would have gone very badly with Rez, but he'd thought of a way to curb the Fleetmaster's wrath.

In carrying out his original mission of the live, whole, capture of a human pilot, Rez could shield himself from discipline and might even gain a reward for himself if he played his cards right. It wasn't ideal, but it could have been worse. With the Prophet's blessing upon his mission, his Sangheili masters couldn't touch him.

So for now, he just had to keep this languid scrap of impiety alive long enough to be passed off for transport to High Charity. That didn't mean he had to treat it _well_, however. Humans were disgusting, faithless beings, an affront to the gods and physically repulsive to boot. Being more or less devout by Kig-Yar standards, Rez truly believed in the promise of the forerunners and the salvation of the Great Journey. But the Kig-Yar tradition of ruthless mercantilism wasn't so easily discarded, and not a jackal alive would speak against the principle of doing for yourself whatever you could to your benefit along the way.

Rez took a small flask from the pod's meagre store of sundries and uncorked it, giving it a cautious sniff. The smell wrinkled his sensitive nose and he held it away, repulsed by the strength. This was Sangheili 'battle drink', a potent concoction of dubious ingredients from Sanghelios, the Sangheili homeworld. The Elites held it sacred as a curative elixir of sorts. It was supposed to dull pain and speed the healing process as well as lend a warrior prowess in battle.

Strictly outlawed on Covenant vessels, it was understood that the Prophets turned a blind eye to its acquisition, so long as it was approved through the _proper_ channels. Its presence here was a fluke of the lifeboat's origin, as with many of the _Time of Harvest's _components, it had begun its life on a different vessel that had been scrapped and looted for parts by the opportunistic Kig-Yar. The lifeboat's supply cache had clearly been raided, as evidenced by the lack of foodstuffs and objects of any mercantile value, but the flask had been left behind as unpalatable.

Rez took the flask to the human, forcing it into his hand.

"Drink," he ordered.

Lockman accepted the purple flask with hesitation. He unscrewed the cap and took a cautious sniff. The smell caused him to jolt upright with a start, almost spilling the flask. Rez caught his hand and clasped it tight around the flask with his claw.

"Drink!" he ordered again.

"Yeah, this is alcohol." He took another sniff, and despite himself, a slight smile creased his lips. With only a little hesitation, he put the flask to his lips and took an exploratory sip. His grin widened. Rez watched in alarm as the pilot tipped the flask skyward, his throat bobbing as he seemed to be trying to down the entire stock in one go.

"Stop!" Rez cried, pulling the flask away from the human's lips. Lockman fought him, pulling away with the flask and throwing himself over it like a football player. In the end, Rez let him keep it.

Whatever was in the flask seemed to have the effect of making the human decidedly more communicative. Rez almost regretted the change. Now the pilot was chatting amicably, acting as though he was on good terms with the alien that not long ago had been trying to kill him. Rez rubbed his eyes, mystified. He'd seen elite Majors hit the table after consuming _half _of the fiery brew that the human had just ingested.

"So how'd they get you?" Lockman slurred, already a little woozy from the unexpected liquid boon.

"What?" Rez asked carefully.

"Like, how'd they get you? Was it all the motivational posters or how good you thought you'd look for the chicks in uniform?" He laughed, hardly taking noticed of the jackal's perplexed expression. "I guess for me it was more like: hey, join the UNSC or get glassed." He shook his head. "Yeah, you probably wouldn't know about that."

Rez wasn't sure what to say to that. It didn't sound like a question, but nor did the human seem all that willing to argue the point. The mood-altering substance was visibly doing its work.

"Have you ever glassed a planet?" Lockman persisted, his eyes going leery. He leaned forward, and for a moment, Rez worried that he might get aggressive. He discretely readied his plasma pistol.

"No, I have never glassed a world," he said honestly. "My ship is too small for its own plasma projector."

"Yeah, it seemed pretty small. Not as purple as the others. Why is that? What kind of ship is it?"

Rez thought a moment about how best to answer.

"It was second-line, as you say, yes?" The conversation was taxing on his knowledge of human English. "For taking salvage."

"So like, you're a pirate or something, right? Like, you're not good enough to be in the Covenant so they give you the dumb dangerous jobs?" Lockman asked, hazily recalling the predominant human theory on the origin of the alien race. The jackals were supposed to be a dominated species or something, a subservient lower-caste.

Rez hissed, baring his fangs at the casual slight.

"Kig-Yar are strong!" he insisted, thumping his chest for emphasis. "We fight because we _choose _so!"

Lockman shook his head, pointing at the jackal's ruined jumpsuit.

"That's not what I heard. The way I hear, there was a big war and your kind lost_, _so now you've gotta make do with all the second-rate gear and the bad jobs. You're disposable!"

Rez was tempted to pluck the human's eyeballs from their delicate sockets, but the comment struck a little too close to his sensibilities, driving home what every Kig-Yar knew and vehemently denied. They _were _a dominated species, kept intentionally low on the Covenant totem pole by centuries of oppression and neglect. Only the Unggoy had it any worse, and the hierarchy between the two species was as changing as the tides.

"No! Not so! Your _Marines _are disposable, as you say," Rez retorted. "They die like children. Fools! Do not talk to me of _disposable_."

Lockman put on a grave face, seeming to mull his words

"At least we're fighting. We're dying for every inch you take from us. We're paying in blood for every planet you destroy." He chuckled mirthlessly and seemed to draw himself up. "_You, _Rez, you and your kind: you just gave up when your back was up against the wall. You coulda fought, maybe even _won _something, you know that? Because the Prophets and the Elites and all their little helpers—they're all _evil!_ What they want is absolute, total dominion over the galaxy, rule by oppression and torture and fear, and _you! _You're _helping _them do that! Did you know that?" he choked out, froth flecking his lips.

"Of course you do! You just don't care, because you're too weak and cowardly and soft to pick the moral high ground, and you'd rather spend the rest of your worthless life picking up the scraps that the Prophets toss you! Dumbass Jackals..."

Rez snarled and took a swipe at the human's head with the butt of his plasma pistol. Lockman was too worked up to get out of the way and took it to the bridge of his already-weakened nose. There was a terrific crack and blood spurted anew. Rez backed away in disgust, repulsed by the sight. Lockman hardly felt it. As he reached up to pinch off the flow, he fixed the jackal with a stare that froze his marrow.

Rez felt the urge to say something to save face, but he was tongue-tied. The human settled back against the bulkhead, and Rez could only glower as he thought about the human's words. Though spitefully presented and bluntly delivered, he could not deny the ring of truth about some of the points that the human had raised. But that was seditious thinking, and Rez had not ascended the ranks of the Covenant by entertaining the notion that the Prophets were anything less than infallible.

Still, it confirmed what he'd long suspected. He tried to come up with a good retort, but nothing came. He was tempted to kill the human outright and remove the source of awkward questions, but the thought of the reward he stood to gain stayed his hand. He prayed that the Fleetmaster would return soon and remove this uncomfortable burden of thought from his hands. For the moment, there was nothing to do but sit in silence and tend to his own thoughts while the human kept to his.


	7. Master of Resolve

**0800, August 14, 2552, _CSS_ _Master of Resolve_**

Standing on the bridge of his obsolescent RPV-class destroyer, Fleet Master Garrus Garamee felt a familiar wrenching in his heart. When he looked out at the unknowable vastness of the stars, each sheltering innumerable worlds, he thought only of the distant fronts where his brothers spilled blood for honor and ascension. Such glories were past him now.

He'd been placed in a bad command. He knew it and so did everyone else. To be the master of a salvage fleet was hardly a desirable station for the veteran Sangheili commander. But the Prophets, in their wisdom, had decreed it so, and Garamee's honor would not allow him to refuse.

His disgrace had come upon him as suddenly as it was unlooked-for. Against his will the orders had come; placing him in charge of what could only generously be described as a second-line fighting unit. The dispiriting quality of his crew and the aging vessels with which they were furnished were clues to the low esteem that the San' Shyuum held his mission in.

There were some who wondered publicly whether 'Grim' Garamee's meteoric fall was due to some unconfessed heresy or political intrigue. For Garamee's part, he made no effort to address the inquiries of the curious. The gossip of idle speculators held little weight with him.

What he despised the most was the _pity_. The awkward, almost apologetic deference which he was shown by his contemporaries was humiliating. There was always the underlying implication that Garamee must have done something to deserve such a dishonor, or that he was somehow inferior to the _fighting_ Sangheili by nature of his post. As if he'd asked to be placed in command of this rabble of Kig-Yar and Jiralhanae mercenaries.

His dissatisfaction was reflected in his harsh tutelage. His will was iron and his discipline was fierce. It was the rod with which he held the myriad incompatible temperaments of the various species under his command together. He had no patience for malcontents or petty infighting aboard his ship: _Master of Resolve_. Those that failed to meet his exacting standard of competence were removed.

It was a pity that not everyone under his command shared this view, he thought, observing an Unggoy and a Jackal squabbling over a scrap of leather on the corner of his bridge. Perhaps it was time for an object lesson.

Clasping his long four-fingered hands behind his back, the Fleet Master finally deigned to notice the junior Sangheili aide standing in the doorway.

"Fleet Master," the young warrior greeted, bowing his head deferentially.

"Speak," Garamee rumbled.

"We have received an automated distress message from the Kig-Yar ship _Time of Harvest,_" the Sangheili said, rubbing his lower mandibles together. "It would seem that she has been destroyed."

The Fleet Master took the news unflinchingly.

"Please do not waste my time with suppositions. Was she or was she not destroyed?"

"Preliminary scans seem to indicate—."

Garamee drew up to his full height, seeming to tower over the younger warrior, though he was actually shorter by a good few inches; slightly below the average height for an adult of his species.

"Major, that is not the question I have asked. Now: you may answer with a simple negative or affirmative—was the vessel destroyed?"

The Sangheili Major wilted under the Fleet Master's scrutiny and bowed his neck.

"Yes, the vessel was destroyed."

The Fleet Master nodded curtly.

"Very good, Major. In the future, when given an order, you will follow it exactly and without hesitation."

"Yes Fleet Master," the junior officer said, sinking his sinuous neck even lower.

"Excellent. Your weapon, please."

To his credit, the warrior did not hesitate. He unfastened the plasma sword from his side and handed it over without protest. Garamee took it in his massive palm and eyed it meticulously. It looked almost new. The ornate hilt gleamed and the black leather grip had been oiled to an immaculate shine. The Fleet Master sniffed disapprovingly. A Sangheili's sword ought to reflect its master's prowess in combat. His own was gouged and battered from much use. This one resembled a display piece.

He ignited the weapon with the characteristic _snap-hiss_ and the blade shone bright and blue, casting long shadows around the darkened bridge. A hush fell over the assembled crew. The Jackal and the Unggoy that had been fighting looked up in surprise at the sound of the weapon being drawn. The Fleet Master pointed at them with a long finger.

"You two! Come here!"

Obediently, the two crewmen trotted over, driven by fear more than anything. Garamee took the opportunity to hand the plasma sword back to its owner.

"You may redeem yourself, Major." He indicated the two reticent crewmen. "Execute them."

The Sangheili Major nodded. He lifted the plasma sword, and with one clean sweep, he swept the heads of the accused from their shoulders.

Garamee nodded his approval as the two corpses fell smoking onto the deck. He could feel the eyes of the other command crew turning back to their stations with renewed urgency. He hoped that the lesson had not been wasted.

"Excellent blade-work, Major," he commended. "You may sheathe your weapon."

"Yes, Fleet Master," the red-armored Elite said reverently. He did as told, deactivating his weapon and returning it to its place at his side.

"Good. Tell me your name, warrior."

"I am D'lar Sedamee, Fleet Master."

"Clean your weapon, Sedamee. You are dismissed."

Bowing again, the Elite Major left the bridge, hopefully with a new outlook on life.

Garamee looked around the spacious purple-lit bridge, daring anyone to take issue with his judgement. He hoped the lesson had been learned. He was not callous—he regretted the need to expend lives in this way; but it was to the benefit of the entire crew. A well-disciplined crew was an effective one, and the surest road to discipline was through fear.

"Remove these bodies!" he ordered in a tone that left no room for discussion. "Helmsman, make best possible speed to the _Time of Harvest. _And find me Ragarus!"

His orders were carried out immediately. A troop of Unggoy filed in and made off with the bodies, taking them where; he did not know, nor did he wish to guess. A slipspace course was plotted and the lights dimmed momentarily as the ship's great fusion reactors rumbled to life. A moment later, the tiny pinpricks of light out the viewscreen turned to streaks as they made the jump to slipspace. The transition was seamless. Within minutes, they were plying the empty space between the stars.

Shaking the stiffness out of his segmented neck, Garamee turned back to his personal viewscreen. He could feel the eyes of the command crew on his back. If they thought his judgment severe, they would not voice it.

Slipspace and its endless lanes of streaking stars had always fascinated him. When he was a child on Sanghelios he'd loved the pristine night sky above his rural keep, far from the city lights. The dazzling display reminded him of those simpler times.

Drawing a long breath, the Fleet Master searched the undulating ripples of slipspace for news from the front. It was held among Sangheili that the shifting planes could present visions of the future to the strong of spirit. But today he was disappointed. The celestial currents of slipspace revealed no portents.

"Fleet Master," a deep voice rumbled, jarring him from his thoughts.

Garamee did not turn around. The voice was unmistakably that of a Jiralhanae. His sensitive nostrils confirmed it.

"Ragarus," Garamee replied respectfully. "Join me for a moment."

There was a shuffling sound, and suddenly Garamee was aware of the presence of a huge Jiralhanae at his side, massive even by their standards. Under other circumstances, this might have given him cause for concern, but he knew he had little to fear from this particular Brute.

Ragarus was not a typical slavering Brute warchief. His massive frame hid a perpetually calculating mind and a savage intellect. Furthermore, his loyalty to the Covenant, and by extension, the Fleet Master, was as ferocious as his prowess in combat. In him, Garamee had found a capable second-in-command and a loyal confidant.

"How is your neck?" the Fleet Master asked, with genuine concern.

The Brute chieftain rolled his massive shoulders thoughtfully, exposing a line of stark white scars on the hairless nape of his neck.

"It is healing adequately," he rumbled. "It is not a concern."

Garamee nodded, but did not persist. The plasma scarring had to be hurting him terribly, but it would have been an affront to the chieftain's honor to admit it.

"Very well. There is a matter with which I would like your assistance. The vessel, _Time of Harvest_," he explained. "It has dropped out of contact. We presume it destroyed. A distress signal was received and we go to answer it."

The gray-furred simian grumbled his distaste.

"To lose a sanctified vessel, not in battle—it is almost _heretical, _is it not?"

"At very least, it is an act of gross negligence," Garamee agreed. "I see that we are of the same accord on this matter."

"Are we not always?" the great Jiralhanae asked.

The Fleet Master took a moment to marvel at the significance of that statement. Few Sangheili could boast the same.

"And if we should find any alive?" he mused aloud, smiling to himself. He already knew what the answer would be.

"Let the punishment fit the crime!" Ragarus roared, his eyes flashing.

"I am glad to see that we agree on this point as well." Garamee nodded. "So be it." He turned his snakelike head to face the pilot. "Helmsman, how long until our arrival?"

"A matter of minutes, Fleet Master," the Sangheili pilot called.

"Very well." He turned back to Ragarus. "I go to oversee the collection of survivors personally. Will you accompany me?"

Ragarus shook his massive head in polite refusal.

"Thank you Fleet Master, but I must attend to my own crew."

Garamee nodded graciously.

"Your devotion to duty is commendable. Go! I will not make the Great Journey without you, should we chance upon the path in your absence."

Ragarus snorted his amusement.

"By your leave, Fleet Master." He inclined his head deferentially and lumbered off the bridge. He left alone, needing no aide or body guard. The gargantuan hammer he carried on his back was protection enough.

When he was gone, Garamee turned back to his thoughts. There was talk on the battlenet of the discovery of a new human world; this one heavily populated and defended as something with value—the humans were putting up their backs: they were not withdrawing in a fighting retreat like they usually did. It was almost as though this world were of some special importance.

The fighting would be thick. He longed to be there, taking part in the campaign of conquest, but his duties held him here. Babysitting obstinate Kig-Yar and Jiralhanae pirates in the far reaches of what the humans called 'outer colonies'. The ignominy of it galled him, but what could he really do?

"Time to destination?" he inquired again, feeling the need to do something_, anything, _rather than stand here uselessly on his bridge, an impotent figurehead like the spacefaring Sangheili Admiralty of old.

"We are exiting Slipspace now, Fleet Master!" the helmsman called back. Garamee nodded his approval. This one was a competent pilot, and adequate to the station, if a little unambitious in Garamee's eyes.

True to his word, the swirling vortex outside the holographic observation bubble smoothed and flattened back into a real-time representation of space. The streaking lines of stars materialized into diamond-hard points of light. Simultaneous flashes signaled the arrival of the rest of his small fleet. They moved away into a loose holding pattern, drifting off like a string of paper lanterns, visible only by the cold blue light of their ion engines. Ragarus was tending them well, leaving Garamee free to issue commands.

"Begin rescue operations," he ordered. "Seek survivors and scan for anything unusual. It is possible that we may come under attack from a human vessel."

His orders were relayed with efficiency and the lights dimmed red as the ship went to battle stations. The Kig-Yar ship had made no mention of opposition before it was lost, leading him to assume pilot error as the cause for its disappearance. But this sector had been the location of a ship-to-ship engagement only hours before, and it was possible that human reinforcements had arrived: too late to turn the tide, but possibly remaining in-system to pick off any opportunistic scavengers who might return to the scene of the battle.

He would take no chances. He ordered the plasma projector charged and the point-defense turrets manned. With some trepidation, he ordered his vessel into the heart of the drifting wreckage.

Floating debris from the battle was everywhere. Banshees and human fighters hung motionless in the air, engines dark and silent, tossed away like toys. Pieces of charred metal up to a mile across drifted in the void, mingling with crystalline clouds of frozen coolant and what could only be bodies, slowly twirling and bumping into each other as they drifted across the vast plain of nothingness until the gravity of some celestial mass exerted its slow influence across the eons and pulled them inexorably into its crushing well from which there could be no escape.

Flickers of ghostly light flashed against space as the _Master of Resolve_'s pulse lasers fended off the larger pieces of debris that got too close. The shields flared occasionally as smaller objects bounced off the elegant architecture of the sleek alien vessel.

Garamee stood in silence, hands clasped behind his back. He felt no emotion. Battle and its consequences were as familiar to him as the Seven Tenets, recited daily. He could not muster any pity for the humans—they had picked a losing fight. Their faithlessness was an affront to the gods, and he had no pity to spare for heretics.

His eyes probed the sea of wreckage, looking for anything out of the ordinary. He fixed upon a section of the human spaceship that looked more intact than the rest. It still bore the letters 'UNSC', and appeared relatively unharmed by plasma scoring. He ordered his gunners to fire upon it, as practice. They did so with gusto, eager to try out their weapons against a target that couldn't shoot back.

Elsewhere, the debris lit up with flashes of blue fire as the ships under Ragarus's command did the same, systematically targeting anything that looked big enough to shelter survivors. Garamee smiled, pleased with their initiative. He gave the order to withdraw from the wreckage, leaving the rest of his fleet to finish the cleansing. He was more interested in investigating the last-known position of the Kig-Yar salvage ship, _Time of Harvest_.

It was there, listing slowly and venting radioactive fire from a massive breach amidships. It had taken catastrophic damage, either gutted by one of the human's massive projectile weapons, or from a very lucky shot at the exact moment its shields had lowered to fire. Garamee was willing to bet on the latter, however improbable: the damage was ragged but superficial, likely the result of a missile impact rather than the obliterating influence of a human 'MAC' round.

There would be no survivors. All decks had burned—it must have become a hellish inferno for all inside for the brief moments after the impact. He could summon no pity. A Shipmaster who would place his vessel in such a compromising position deserved such a fate.

More worrisome was the implication that the Kig-Yar ship had been destroyed in an act of hostility. Garamee ordered a more powerful scan of the operational area and recalled Ragarus's battlegroup to join with his. The combined forces of his two Jiralhanae and Kig-Yar vessels offered some safety in numbers, though neither were large enough to mount any truly potent weaponry.

A moment later, the first results of the scan began to come back. A flurry of barely contained excitement broke out amongst the predominantly Kig-Yar bridge crew. Garamee called for a report and got it. On the holo-display, a single Covenant glyph blazed amber amidst a twirling field of debris.

"Focus on the contact and enhance," the Fleet Master ordered.

The whole transparent display distorted and flexed as a visual representation of the friendly contact was displayed in high definition. A single Covenant escape pod came into view, trailing pieces of what appeared to be a destroyed human fighter. The pulsing glyph separated and became two individual symbols, suggesting two life signs aboard.

Garamee's maw twisted into an approximation of a smile as he fingered his plasma sword thoughtfully.

"Recover that pod," he ordered. "And ready my shuttle. I wish to attend to this matter personally."

"As you command, Fleet Master," the helmsman replied.

The _Master of Resolve _listed on its axis and set off on an intercept course with the lonely pod. It overtook the directionless craft in a matter of minutes, dwarfing the small ship as it lined up its gravity projector. Garamee watched a moment before stalking from the bridge, his shimmering command cloak flowing behind him. Several of his Sangheili bodyguards joined him in the corridor and they made their way down to the docking bay to await the arrival of his personal Phantom.

Unggoy crewmen looked up in alarm at his passage and scurried out of his way. Garamee paid them no mind. He was used to such displays. Those who needed the simpering deference of their inferiors to feel secure in their command were, in his opinion, not worthy of their station.

The panicked gibbering of Unggoy and the resentful stares of skulking Kig-Yar meant nothing to him. But the sudden appearance of two massive silver-backed Jiralhanae at the end of the hallway drew his interest. They stood at either side of the gently curving corridor, not exactly blocking the way, but their presence was unusual enough that it gave Garamee pause for thought.

As he drew up, the two simians leered at him, making none of the gestures of respect that a subservient crewman ought. Evidently, the Fleet Master's two bodyguards thought this suspicious enough that they put their hands to the hilts of their weapons. One took a half step forward and started to speak, but Garamee put up a hand to silence him.

"Move aside, Jiralhanae," he ordered in his own gravelly baritone. The folds of his cloak drew around his hunched form, making him seem like a predator ready to explode into motion rather than emphasizing his diminutive stature.

The large furred aliens did not seem to take his meaning. They drew aside, but did not fully vacate the opening. To enter the docking bay, Garamee would have to pass between them.

"Listen, Brute!" one of his guards, a Special Operations Major, exploded. "When the Fleet Master gives you an order, you will do as he says!"

"Not for much longer," one of them chuckled.

The two Jiralhanae shared a smug glance that would have unnerved the Fleet Master slightly had he not known himself better.

"What am I to take that to mean?" he asked evenly. "If you meant that your retirement is at hand, you are correct." Faster than either Elite or Brute could react, he drew his needle sidearm from beneath the folds of his cloak and placed a single luminescent pink shard between the wide eyes of the Jiralhanae spokesman. The detonation was suitably impressive.

The body sagged to the floor with a heavy thud, and Garamee turned his sidearm on the second Brute in one smooth motion, holding it steady on the alien's sternum. The Brute froze with his hand halfway to the Spiker at his side. With growls, the Fleet Master's Sangheili bodyguards drew their energy swords and advanced, pushing the Jiralhanae against the wall with the tips of their white-hot blades inches from his throat.

"At your command, Fleet Master," the Major growled, baring his fangs to the paralyzed Brute.

Garamee thought of allowing the Major to run the insubordinate crewman through, but decided against it. It would only serve to reinforce tensions between his Sangheili and Jiralhanae crew, and despite what he thought of their kind's fighting skill, it was true that the Sangheili were outnumbered on his vessels by a factor of more than three to one.

"Release him," he ordered, gently guiding the Major's sword arm away from the Brute's exposed neck. His eyes darted, wondering what punishment the Fleet Master had in store. The stink of fear was cloying. The nearly headless Brute on the deck had focused his attention.

"Your name, Crewman?" Garamee asked firmly.

"I am Falal, Fleet Master," the Jiralhanae stammered, not taking his eyes off the still-glowing blade.

"I am not extending you mercy, Falal," The Fleet Master growled. "I leave you to Ragarus. I shall tell him of your insubordination."

The Jiralhanae's eyes widened and his face contorted in panic. With a snarl, he pushed past Garamee and bolted off down the corridor. His guards raised their weapons, but the Fleet Master waved them down.

"Let him go. He will learn the true meaning of respect before he dies. I can think of no more fitting punishment."

Still wary, his guards nodded, though they did not lower their swords. Several armed Unggoy came huffing down the corridor, their armor bearing the white markings of security forces. Garamee halted them with an upraised hand.

"Put away your weapons. The danger is past."

The Unggoy halted uncertainly and took notice of the lifeless brute. Hesitantly, they approached and began to make an effort at hauling him away.

Noticing the sidelong glances of passing crewmen, the Major raised his voice.

"This one deserved his fate! Save your pity for the miserable creature we go to meet!"

Garamee cast his gaze around the corridor, daring any to meet it. None did. He smiled, assured in the totality of his command. _Fear_. That was the way to true authority. He gestured and the others fell in smartly, continuing on into the docking bay. Another object lesson would need to be made. Thankfully, an opportunity was close at hand.


	8. Sierra Six

**0450, August 13, 2252, Planet XR-38**

Snow was falling rapidly in the gray light. Great white clumps of the stuff hissed through the trees and clung to the Spartan's upturned visor. Sitting upright and perfectly still in a deep treewell, he was already half-buried in snow. Despite this, he made no move to extricate himself or clear his faceplate.

Behind the gold-tinted polarized visor, the Spartan's eyes were shut and his breathing was shallow. He had his motion sensors set, but to very low sensitivity to avoid picking up on the swirling snow, which was his real defense. With a dark green wool blanket drawn around the shoulders of his drab gray MJOLNIR powered armor, the Spartan was as invisible as the shadows themselves.

Outside, the thermometer in his HUD read -23 degrees, cold enough to lower a human's body temperature to dangerous levels in minutes. But nestled inside a cocoon of high-tech climate-controlled armor and liquid-crystal reactive gel, the Spartan was nearly comfortable. Despite its advanced nature, his suit of MK. V power armor was still a military design, and that meant a minimum of ergonomic comfort in favor of functionality. His back would be very stiff on awakening.

He dozed uneasily, lulled by the whisper of snow falling on the needles. He'd always liked that sound. The sled-runner hiss reminded him of home, or at least, what he thought of as home: the planet Reach—birthplace of the SPARTAN IIs.

Home. His home. He was Spartan Bryce 056, a genetically augmented super-soldier.

The memories of snow and cold nights in the Highland mountains where he'd cut his teeth as a soldier were still entrenched in his mind. That had been another kind of experience altogether. He'd had no environment suit then.

He recalled vividly a circle of huddled faces desperately rubbing their hands over a smoky 'fire' that could barely have lit a cigarette: he and his fellow Spartan trainees. They'd almost frozen that night. He shuddered involuntarily at the memory—it was one of the last he had of all of them together.

As though summoned by his stirring, a small blue dot appeared in the corner of his vision and gently unfolded into a geometrical approximation of a flower, made up of tiny outward-pointing triangles.

"Bluebell," the Spartan murmured, acknowledging the presence of his AI partner. "What is it?"

"Good morning, Spartan 056," a hushed female voice whispered in his ear. "The time is now 0421. You had requested an awakening in four minutes."

"Go ahead and cancel that alarm," he muttered. "I'm up."

"Affirmative. Canceling alarm for 0425. You have been asleep for five hours and twenty-one minutes."

"Thanks, Blue," the Spartan replied quietly. He couldn't fault her for her uninspired dialogue. AI-33-3 'Bluebell' was one of the 'dumb' versions of UNSC AI, lacking the rudimentary self-awareness inherent in warship-based constructs. Her responses were limited by her programming, but sometimes she surprised him.

Five hours. He hadn't meant to sleep that long, but there hadn't seemed like much point in pressing on during last night's white-out conditions. His armor negated the extreme cold to a certain degree, but the terrain in this hemisphere was treacherous even in broad daylight. It wouldn't do to stumble into a hidden crevasse covered by a thin layer of snow. He'd already found out that they could be very deep indeed.

Peering up through the branches above his head, he took a moment to appreciate just how very earth-like the flora here was. The cones were a little different, star-shaped rather than round, but the bark and the flat needles shared many attributes with pine trees he'd seen back on Reach. Maybe they were some kind of evolutionary offshoot. More importantly, he could see a patch of gray light, even though his HUD told him it was before dawn. The sun didn't set in this hemisphere: it just moved in slow circles around the sky.

It also meant that the snowfall was abating. Winter had expended its fury. He'd come to the end of the storm.

"Receiving transmission from UNSC Prowler-Class vessel _Buoyant_," Bluebell murmured. "Shall I patch it through?"

"Just a second."

Like a buried forerunner artifact rising from long centuries of entombment, the Spartan slowly rose from the snow crust that had formed around him in the night. His armor creaked and crackled as it warmed up to his use. The joints were frozen. He opened up the heuristic menu in his HUD and solved the problem by increasing the temperature of the hydraulic fluid in the lines that ran capillary-like through his entire suit of Mjolnir armor.

He rebooted his motion tracker and efficiently repacked his survival equipment. Finally, he slung the MA5B rifle over his shoulder and crawled out of the four-foot deep tree well he'd sheltered in for the night.

He had to crawl out on his hands and knees to avoid sinking into the snow. His MJOLNIR battle armor weighed nearly a ton and was ill-suited for walking over the loosely-packed powder. Even so, he sank to his elbows and had to use some of his enhanced Spartan strength to unearth himself and roll over onto his back.

There he lay for a while, still hidden from observers by the falling snow. It was just as well, because what he did next looked nothing short of absurd.

From his pack he withdrew a pair of antiquated wood-frame snow shoes, to be secured to his armored boots with leather straps. It was an extremely low-tech solution for a universal problem. The wide surface of the shoes would keep him from sinking into the snow. Even though they looked completely at odds with his gleaming set of Mjolnir power armor, it beat trying to force his way through the drifts that were at least neck-deep in some places.

Satisfied, he took to his feet, and with the help of a pair of collapsible aluminum trekking poles, he stood.

"That's quite the getup," Bluebell whispered with a hint of amusement.

"Shame it didn't come with mittens," the Spartan quipped. Interesting—she'd made a joke. He'd have to talk to his benefactors about that. Maybe it was time for another memory wipe.

He tottered a moment, finding his balance. Snowshoeing didn't come naturally to the heavily-armored Spartan. "I'm good. Go ahead and open a channel to _Buoyant_."

"Affirmative. Opening channel."

There was a rush of static in his ears before a green light indicated success and a postage-stamp-sized image of a UNSC Naval officer appeared in the corner of his HUD. He bore the rank of a Commander on his epaulet and wore the insignia of ONI's Section III. The scowl he wore was more ominous still. Bryce instinctively stood to attention, even though he knew the other man couldn't see him.

"Sir," he said crisply, "Chief Petty Officer Sierra-056 reporting in."

"You missed your last comm check, Sierra. What's going on down there?" He appeared to be squinting at something, and Bryce had a difficult time trying not to meet his eyes.

"Sir, there was heavy snowfall last night. Visibility zero. Short wave communications were a no-go with all the scatter off the storm. I bivouacked in a sheltered location and I am ready to proceed with the mission."

"That's all well and good Sierra, but that decision may have cost us a lot of time," the ONI officer grumbled. Bryce noticed how bloodshot the man's eyes were and knew that he'd probably had the less sleep of the two. But he couldn't feel guilty about that—to proceed in blizzard conditions was simply inadvisable, even for a Spartan.

"Sir—" he began, but the Commander cut him off with a dismissive wave of his thin hand.

"I don't care about that, Sierra. All that matters is that the job gets done." He paused to stifle a dry cough. Bryce wondered how just how old he was. To the thirty-year-old Spartan, he looked very old indeed to be wearing the rank of Commander. That either made him a total incompetent, or he was more than he appeared. The Spartan was willing to put money on the latter.

"I will complete the mission, sir."

"I expect that you will, Chief. From now on, the mission comes first, copy?"

"Copy that, sir." Bryce kept his face impassive, but inside he was glowering. As if he needed to be reminded. A Spartan's mission was his life.

"Good." The Commander reached offscreen and seemed to accept a tablet—the old kind, with a pen and paper. "Your orders stand, Chief. Make your way to waypoint Juliet and proceed with your objective."

"Yes sir," Bryce replied, and then paused awkwardly, searching for the right words. What was the point of this communication? Calling just to reaffirm the objective was a waste of everyone's time. Something else had to be afoot.

"Sir?" he ventured carefully.

"What is it, soldier? Come now, speak freely."

_Speak freely._ Bryce understood. That was ONI code—it actually meant the exact opposite. It said without saying: _Don't. This channel isn't secure_. It was basic fieldcraft the Bryce understood well.

"Understood, sir. I'm just requesting re-confirmation of the objective. What is the nature of my target?"

The Commander sighed audibly, putting on a very convincing tone of voice that suggested irritation with a wayward subordinate, even as he scribbled furiously on his tablet.

"Your objective remains unchanged, Sierra. You will arrive at the Tom-Tom signal array station on hill 323 and effect repairs to the malfunctioning repeater. We cannot discount the possibility of Covenant sabotage, so plan accordingly."

At the same time, he held up his tablet, and Bryce read the words: _AA, watchers, nature._

Bryce nodded unconsciously, and then remembered that the visual feed was one-way.

"Understood, sir, " he said simply, leaving the answer intentionally open-ended for the Captain's benefit. Things had just got a lot more complicated.

"Get it done, Sierra. _Buoyant_ out."

Bryce slowly sank back down on his haunches, his senses alert. He warily scanned the snowy terrain, checking each rock, tree and stump against his memory. He had good reason to fear that he was no longer alone—the Captain's message had told him a good many things without outright saying them.

For instance, he'd referred to Bryce as 'Sierra', 'Chief', and 'Soldier', but never expressly as 'Spartan'. None of these titles were exactly incorrect, but they weren't quite in adherence with protocol, either. It had been a careful selection—he'd intentionally tried to avoid indicating that there was a Spartan super-soldier deployed in the field.

And then there was the subject matter. The Prowler could see a great deal from its position in orbit. The Commander was giving him a warning about what to expect without tipping his hand. It was infantry shorthand: 'AA': meaning the presence of anti-aircraft artillery, 'watchers'— meaning enemy listening posts, possibly pillboxes—and 'nature', meaning 'nature of enemy force and deployment unknown'.

It wasn't a lot to go on, but it was enough to get him started.

"Bluebell, begin monitoring local area for radio transmissions," the Spartan ordered. "Notify me immediately if you detect anything."

"Understood, Chief Petty Officer." Her graphical representation vanished.

He opened the mission briefing folder in his HUD and skimmed the dossier for relevant information. Array 323, so named for the hilltop it stood on, was an unmanned UNSC radio monitoring station, designed to intercept and 'boost' the signal from a string of automated slipspace probes strung out around the inner colonies. It was a heavily classified initiative, and one of incalculable value to the UNSC.

A web of thirty or so interconnected probes formed a continuous web of unbroken surveillance around Earth and her solar system. Officially listed as survey equipment, their sensitive instruments peered deep into slipspace, searching for the presence of large anomalies that could account for the presence of Covenant warships coming from the 'wrong' side of the galaxy. It was a sophisticated early warning system that would hopefully buy the UNSC several hours of invaluable time to prepare in the event of a Covenant incursion. It's designers called it the 'Tom-tom,' for its function as a long-range signaling device.

XR-38, a small, frozen planet deemed of limited value to human colonization efforts, made the perfect place for a relay station, intercepting the probe's transmissions and passing them along to UNSC HIGHCOM. The whole project was of immense importance, and would be considered a high-value target to the Covenant.

Ten days ago, the array had gone suddenly offline. The UNSC's initial response had been reactionary. A plan had been drawn up for the insertion of a whole company of Helljumpers, supplemented by a team of Spartan III commandos. Somewhere along the plan's realization, someone, probably an ONI officer, had pointed out that these teams of crack special forces would probably be better put to use elsewhere.

That's when ONI had revealed their ace in the hole and produced him like a rabbit out of a hat. A previously unknown Spartan II under their control: Bryce-056. Questions as to how and where the Office of Naval Intelligence had gotten their hands on a Spartan II were lost amid the general feeling of reassurance that assigning a 'real' Spartan to such an important mission tended to elicit. The legend of the Master Chief and his Blue team had formed all of the remaining Spartan IIs into a kind of living legend. They were supposedly unkillable, impervious, and immune to injury.

Bryce knew better, but he wasn't telling. It was all there for anyone with the clearance to read his file, but few did, and it didn't seem to matter once he strode up in his imposing set of gleaming gray Mjolnir armor.

He wasn't quite a Spartan, not anymore, but he was a close enough facsimile that the difference was hardly noticeable. He belonged to ONI now. They'd claimed him—picked him up out of the trash after Halsey's augmentation regime had left him twisted and useless in his own body. They'd restored him to functionality and made him a soldier again, and for that, he would do anything—even jump feet-first into a probable ambush.

But there were ways around that. ONI hadn't just stopped at fixing his legs; they'd also wrought his mind into a weapon more formidable than any warship in the UNSC arsenal. All Spartans were tactical geniuses in their own right, learned in the art of war from childhood. But Bryce was exceptional. He was an Intelligence Spartan, as crass as that dichotomy sounded.

During his long recovery, he'd had access to the best tutors and the combined knowledge of every prestigious archive that ONI could access, which was quite a large number of them. Training: not in body, but in mind, in tandem with the agony of his physical rehabilitation. It had been his drive to succeed and his will to overcome.

He had six Masters degrees and could converse at length on a dizzying variety of subjects: botany, particle physics, philosophy both contemporary and archaic. He could list facts and figures for every military weapon designed in the last three centuries and his grasp of spycraft rivalled that of some 21st century Hollywood depictions. He could probably have lectured at any number of prestigious universities. And he could jump and run and shoot almost as well as any Spartan, which was to say, exceptionally well. Not bad for an NCO on an E-7's pay grade.

Now he turned his focus to the puzzle at hand. The Prowler captain had suggested the presence of an enemy. He would do his best to figure out how to circumvent or destroy them on the path to his objective.

"Blue, give me a tactical display of Hill 323," he commanded.

A grid of amber lines appeared before his eyes and resolved into a wavy topographical representation of the area, superimposed on the snow by the augmented reality software in his helmet. The software mapped his eye movements, altering the projection accordingly, giving the appearance of a three-dimensional object in a nearly seamless illusion.

Unsurprisingly, it was as he remembered from the briefing stills. Hill 323 was less of a hill and more of a plateau, really just a mountain with a flat top. The relief lines were very close together, suggesting a near vertical ascent. He frowned. He'd brought an ice pick and crampons, but for all his training, he was not a mountaineer.

A small service road wound its way up from the lowlands to the top of the mesa by means of a snaking path blasted from the surface of the rock. He considered it as a means of assault and filed the observation away for later. If there was an enemy force occupying the area, the hill itself was the obvious place to set up. If he'd been in charge of organizing the defense, he would have taken advantage of the high ground. Visibility would have been excellent and there was only one clear path for any assaulting ground force to take.

So he'd take another path. He pulled the straps of his jump pack snug around his shoulders. The last thing his enemies would expect was an aerial insertion without an aircraft.

That left the matter of what to do with the enemy party when he met them. The Covenant liked to deploy small teams of Elite Zealots for sabotage missions such as these. He'd never encountered one before, but he knew from servicemen's accounts that they were genuinely tough. He checked his ammo: 12 magazines for his rifle, and another 3 for his pistol. Plenty. And if he needed to, he could pick up a covenant weapon and use that. He'd done it before.

Satisfied that he'd done all he could without actual eyes-on, he closed the virtual sand table and stood upright. By using the 5X magnification setting offered by his visor, Bryce was just able to make out the first of the distant hills that bled into jagged peaks where the sprawling timberland met the horizon. Somewhere out there was his objective, hill 323.

The sky was gray and heavy with the threat of imminent snow. Bryce recognized the need for urgency. If it began snowing again, it would impede his progress significantly and he might not make the objective by nightfall. With Spartan efficiency, his slung his rifle, grabbed his trekking poles and started off at a swift pace.

His visor polarized automatically as the sun caught his face. It was still strange, moving in the white world. Everything was plastered with blown snow, like a cotton-candy forest. Activating his VISR mode helped somewhat, removing some of the clutter by adding outlines to solid objects.

A three-dimensional waypoint marker flickered to life in his HUD, helpfully pointing the way through the trees.

"Thanks, Blue," he said appreciatively, grateful for the added navigational aid. It allowed him to spend less time navigating and more time scanning his surroundings: essential as he moved deeper and deeper into what he knew to be enemy-held territory.

In his mind's eye, he practiced dropping his ski poles and unlimbering his rifle in response to the sudden appearance of a threat. But it seemed at first that he needn't have worried. For the first ten kilometers, he saw nothing. Not even animal tracks broke the monotony of the endless white landscape.

In any case, he soon found he had other things to worry about. The snow had a bad habit of giving way under his weight around the base of trees despite his equipment, and he began to avoid them altogether. But picking his way through the tightly-clustered growth soon proved tiring, even for a Spartan, and eventually he resigned himself to falling, simply forcing his way through the snow with his enhanced strength when it grew deep.

Eventually, he came to a place where the trees began to thin. He moved carefully, crouch-walking from tree to tree with his shoulders hunched and his rifle held in line with his body. Soon the trees tapered off altogether. He'd come to the end of the woodland and reached the start of the snowline. The first of the gray hills rose up to meet him.

Instinctively, he knelt and surveyed the area across the sights of his rifle. Proceeding unaware across the open ground would be a mistake. He'd be exposed for any watcher with half a brain to see. So instead, he waited.

His caution proved him right. Movement caught his eye to the left. He froze, finger on the trigger. With infinite care, he turned and pointed his rifle, ready to unleash a storm of armor-piercing bullets if the contact turned out to be Covenant.

He was ready for an Elite. He was wrong.

"Blue, are there human colonists on XR-38?" he whispered.

"Analyzing." Bluebell's floral avatar began to spin like a pinwheel as she accessed her memory banks. "Relevant data shows no known human habitation of planet XR-38."

"What about UNSC personnel? Civilian technicians?"

"Negative. Conclusive data shows zero population."

"The data's wrong, Blue. That sure looks like a human to me."

The image of a human female filled the image-enhancing plate of his visor. She was dressed for the weather in an all-white winter parka and boots. She wore orange tinted goggles and carried an MA5C on her back. The only way he could be sure of her gender was the long brown hair that spilled around the edges of her fur-lined hood.

She was carrying a bundle of firewood, and evidently hadn't noticed him. Still, he bristled as she passed him by, not more than thirty meters away. His training immediately classified her as a threat, even as his mind fought to clamp down on other observations not wholly erased by his indoctrination.

His thoughts immediately flitted to the Insurrection—human rebels against the UNSC and the United Earth Government. They were still out there in the murky corners of the galaxy, occasionally stirring to cause trouble for the UNSC, who had bigger things to worry about these days.

She wore no uniform, but that didn't mean much. If she were a member of a rebel cell operating here this close to UNSC space, that made her an enemy and a valid target. His gloved hand tightened on the grip of his rifle, but he could summon no revulsion for her. She was human, after all.

That didn't mean he wouldn't kill her, of course. An enemy of the UNSC was an enemy of humanity, and he was duty-bound to export aggression in whatever form desired to defeat the enemy, no matter what shape they took. Still, he couldn't shake a feeling of fascination as he watched the female sentry stride fearlessly across the blue ice. What could motivate a human being to turn against his own race? Would it not be better for humans to stand united against the threat of extinction?

But his voyeurism was not without purpose. By observing her mannerism and attire, he was actively updating his evaluation of the tactical situation. It occurred to him that vandalism was not a distinctly Covenant behaviour. Humans with a grievance could destroy a relay station just as thoroughly as an alien strike force.

He crept closer. He needed more information to prove his hypothesis. And it seemed as though fate had seen fit to provide him with a convenient source of just that.

He judged the distance at a glance. Not far for a Spartan, and the ice looked solid. It was unusually and vibrantly blue. There must have been some kind of mineral presence in it to tint it that way. But what really mattered was that it looked level and hard enough to attempt without snowshoes.

Slowly, he eased into motion, scanning all the while for the presence of unseen lookouts or a squadmate coming back from taking a piss. But she was alone.

He eased his snowshoes off and got ready to sprint. He waited until she dropped her head to readjust the bundle of split wood. _There._ He charged.

His boots sparked on the glassy surface. She heard him coming, turned halfway and had time to open her mouth in surprise before he drove into her with his shoulder, knocking her to the ice. The female soldier grunted in surprise and pain, and clutched at her broken ribs as she slid over the slippery surface. Firewood went flying in every direction.

The Spartan dropped on her with his knees, immobilizing her with his sheer weight while he effortlessly tore the rifle from her shoulders. With one hand, he crushed it to uselessness and laid her out with a punch from the other.

As quick as lighting, the Spartan threw her flopping form over one of his massive shoulders and swept the area with his rifle one-handed. He took a moment to kick some snow over the site of the scuffle, burying her broken rifle and scattering the logs. There was nothing he could do about the trail of deep gouges from his pounding footsteps, but he hoped that the snow that was beginning to fall gently even now would soon cover them up.

Looking back over his shoulder all the way, he dashed back to the safety of the treeline, abducted cargo in tow. From start to finish, the operation had taken about thirteen seconds, more than enough time for a diligent observer with a high-magnification scope to take notice, and he didn't want to take an S2-AM round in the back if he could help it, energy shields or no.

He moved about fifty meters into the woods and laid his cargo down in a snowbank, covering her with his rifle. She was groaning, half in a daze. Bright blood bubbled from a split lip and froze on her face.

"Bluebell," he said, panting slightly from the exertion. "Send a flash transmission to _Buoyant_ detailing the situation. I need authorization to use advanced interrogation techniques on my detainee."

Bluebell's avatar winked affirmative. A second later, he had his answer.

INTERROGATION OF PRISONER AUTHORIZED. DON'T LEAVE A MESS.

Bryce nodded gamely and took a knee next to her prostate form. From his pack, he drew out a blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders while he waited for her to regain consciousness. He wasn't a cruel man. There was no sense in letting her succumb to shock before he got the answers he needed out of her.

He pressed a canister of smelling salts under her chafed nose, and the effects were immediate. She arched her back violently and shot awake with a scream that would have carried a long way if Bryce hadn't covered her mouth with a gloved hand.

He waited patiently while her eyes roved rapidly back and forth until they finally fixed on him. The dawning realization within them, and then the horror told him all he needed to know. Spartans were known and celebrated by all branches of the UNSC and the general public at large; but for the Insurrection, they might as well have been the bogyman. She was no friend of the UNSC. That was fine. He was no friend of hers, either.

"Hello, ma'am," he said as even-temperedly as he could. "I'm Spartan-056 of the UNSC. I believe you are a member of a rebel group. Is that correct?"

She blinked hard, squeezing frozen tears from her eyes. It might have meant a number of things, but Bryce chose to take it as a 'yes'.

"Okay, ma'am. As of now, you are my prisoner. I'm going to remove my hand, and we're going to have a little chat. You will make no noise unless I ask you a question. What happens after that is up to you. Are we in agreement?"

Her face that he could see flushed red and it she spat a long string of muffled words into his thick palm. It felt like she might have tried to bite his hand, but his bodysuit was made of ballistic-rated kevlar.

He shrugged in an exaggerated fashion to convey the gesture through his armor, and casually drew his magnum sidearm. He couldn't really shoot her without attracting attention to himself, but the sight of it had the desired effect.

She tensed for a moment as though contemplating a struggle, but his effortless strength bore down on her and she relaxed. She said something into his hand that sounded like: 'okay'.

"What was that?" he asked.

"Okay!" This time he heard it.

He withdrew his hand.

"Murderer!" She screamed at the top of her lungs.

Bryce replaced his hand, this time full of snow, and held her kicking and spluttering as he counted to thirty. Interrogations were never pleasant, but this one was necessary. He needed her to talk so that he could get the relay back online and protect humanity. Was that so hard to understand?

A murderer, she'd called him. It wasn't true. She was an enemy of the UNSC and she'd chosen her path. The thought gave him some comfort as he brooded over her, anonymous behind the mirrored visor of his helmet. She had to be feeling real fear now. Maybe she'd talk. Some did. But he doubted that this one would be any different from the rest.


	9. Rescued?

_A/N: I'm going to finish this guys, I swear!_

* * *

><p><strong>1030, August 16, 2552, Position Unknown<strong>

Deep space is full of mysteries. There is the majesty of ageless nebulae, vying for attention with the splendor of supermassive celestial giants wreathed in shining colors no artist ever imagined. There are wild throngs of countless stars sailing the fathomless empty space between strange worlds without number. Space goes on forever, apparently without end.

An infinite space must contain an infinite number of possibilities. To see them all would require an inordinate allocation of resources and an incalculable amount of manpower. But to send a man into space is nothing short of a breach of natural law. Humans were not designed to leave the cradle of atmosphere.

But from the beginning of time, man has pushed the boundaries of the possible, searching out the invisible threads of meaning that bind together the universe and all in it. This is the crux of ingenuity; seeking meaning in the meaningless and order in chaos.

Solutions. The divine produce of humanity. For every problem exists a custom-fitted solution. And so a solution was found. Man left the puerile fields of Earth and went plying amongst the stars.

There were problems at first, but ever and always, solutions jumped into the gap. Technology progressed at a frightening pace until the modern spacefarer could be assured all the comforts and safeties of home, even eleven-billion miles from the nearest populated world.

Every UNSC vessel from the mightiest Destroyer to the humblest inter-system shuttle could be expected to possess certain amenities for the comfort of the crew. The Covenant, it seemed, for all their vaunted technological prowess, had not caught up to this reality yet.

"What—the—hell!" Lockman exclaimed, spitting the last syllable with an equal mixture of revulsion and surprise. "Tell me you did not just do that!"

The Jackal leered at him from across the pod, leisurely unfolding from an unmistakable squatting position. Lockman felt his stomach turn as he looked over the firsthand exhumation of the alien's breakfast. The mess on the deck reminded him of what seagulls did to cars, but on a much larger and more disgusting scale.

He threw up his hands in exasperation.

"That's just fantastic!"

"What means fan-tas-tic?" Rez wanted to know, picking his teeth.

"It means you're a dirty animal!" Lockman shouted in reply, edging as far away from the fishy stench as possible.

"Am I animal? Or are you? On my planet, maybe you are the animal to Kig-Yar."

"Yeah? I've seen hogs with more manners than you, scaly."

He shook his head in frustration, averting his gaze from the offending sight. It was without a doubt the most revolting act he'd ever witnessed.

The jackal would die. He'd make it happen, one way or another. Honor demanded it.

They'd now spent exactly 72 hours together in the pod. That neither had yet killed the other was nothing short of a miracle.

He'd read fictional accounts of castaways adrift at sea in his leisure time aboard the Miriam. If his memory served correctly, a primary factor in their survival always came down to the strength of camaraderie between the survivors.

He looked over at the jackal. Fat chance. A better approximation would have been the story of a castaway sharing a lifeboat with a benevolent tiger shark.

His frustration was growing. It seemed to them that they were on a course to destruction. Without sensors, controls, or even windows, they were effectively blind within the small escape pod.

The fear of _not knowing _was torture for an aviator, and it was driving him up a wall. He checked and re-checked every function of his tacpad, trying to glean _any _mote of relevant data. He had the date, the time and ambient radiation levels—hardly enough to go off of. They could be sliding into a star for all he knew!

Lockman clenched his fists and forced himself to breath. Panicking would not help here. He had to think, to use his mind. He was trained for this, but he'd never thought being marooned in an escape pod could be so _boring._

He wished he'd installed some games on his tacpad like some of the younger crewmen did, or at least brought a book. He couldn't even access technical manuals without connecting to a Longsword's data hub first!

He looked across the pod at the Jackal, but the unwanted guest didn't seem to feel like talking. He was playing a game by himself with small translucent stones, making them skip over each other on the deckplate. Lockman stared for a while, trying to figure out the rules. He couldn't grasp them, despite his effort to comprehend. Maybe there weren't any.

Rez saw him staring and hissed. The pilot held up his hands.

"Hey, relax!" An idea occurred to him. "What are you playing?"

Rez muttered something unintelligible and swept the stones in with his claw. The plasma pistol started to come up. Lockman quickly thrust his palms out in surrender.

"No, it's okay! I want to play! Really!"

The Jackal shot him daggers with his reptilian eyes. Lockman could tell he was unconvinced. He made an educated guess about the nature of the game, calculated on what he knew of the Jackal species. He'd seen marines play games like this before, and he himself was no stranger to the unspoken 'rules' of the endless games of cards he'd played in the pilot's mess with his fellow aviators.

"I have stuff." He fished around in his web gear and drew out a few shiny trinkets. "Look." He held up a small multi-tool and a couple of coveted 'ranger bars', apple-spiced protein in a cellophane wrapper.

Rez forgot his hesitation, and reached out curiously. Lockman saw the intent in his eyes and shut his hand just in time. The Jackal snatched, but the pilot was faster.

"No!" He held up one hand, keeping the goodies clutched to his chest with the other. "No," he repeated, mindful of the plasma pistol in the Jackal's clawed hand. "I want to play. You win, maybe I have more."

Now he was even talking like a Jackal. Great.

But he could tell that he had Rez's attention. He could see the rapid calculations occurring behind the Jackal's opalescent eyes. He'd already figured out that the human was likely to be a complete amateur at the rock-throwing game, and to get things by guile rather than force appealed to his greedy nature.

"You have more?" he asked casually, trying not to appear _too _interested. He didn't know that Lockman had already won the toss.

"Yes," The pilot replied. "Lots." He patted his survival pack. _Fool, _he thought. He just needed to get the Jackal's attention away from the plasma pistol for one second, and then he could grab it.

"You know rules?" Rez said slyly. His eyes glimmered as he left his place against the bulkhead and plopped down cross-legged directly opposite of Lockman.

_Perfect._ Lockman feigned ignorance, offering a shrug.

"No. I was hoping you could teach me."

Rez's grin grew wider. Everything was going very satisfactorily now. When he returned to the _Fleet of Exacting Resolve_, he might have some exciting trinkets to trade with his fellow Kig-Yar crewmembers. The human would certainly have no further use for them once he fell into the Shipmaster's hands.

"Okay, I teach."

True to his word, Rez gave the human a quick explanation of the rock game, omitting a few crucial rules here and there. Unsurprisingly, he won the first three throws. But Lockman proved a surprisingly adept pupil and upset the streak by winning a throw of his own, despite Rez's inadequate explanation of the offside rule.

That frustrated Rez enough that he brought out his heaviest slider and misjudged the pod's gravity, sending his throw wildly off course, which angered him even more. He decided he'd had enough of this game. He could just take what he wanted from the human's corpse later without playing another turn. He got up in a huff and returned to his place on the far bulkhead.

Lockman mentally castigated himself for his botched plan. The Jackal had intentionally kept the plasma pistol out of his reach, and he'd never had a chance to grab for it. Now he was out of goodies. It would be processed emergency rations only from here on out.

But he had got one thing from the Jackal. Rez's interest in his equipment clearly went beyond simple greediness. He wasn't eating any of the foodstuffs.

It seemed clear to Lockman that the Jackal planned to be rescued at some point in the near future. He didn't know much about Covenant technology, but it stood to reason that the Kig-Yar ship he'd destroyed had probably sent some kind of distress signal before exploding. Like it or not, the Covenant were probably on their way.

Lockman refused to despair. He'd survived long enough that he felt it was his duty to continue doing so. One thing he was sure of, though—whatever happened, he would _not _end up as a Jackal prisoner. Not anymore so than he was already, of course.

He'd heard the stories. Jackals ate their prisoners alive. That wasn't the way he wanted to go out.

If he was captured, they would torture him. They would burn him with plasma and scour him with energy knives until he'd screamed out answers for everything they wanted to know, true or not. Then they would kill him.

That had to be the Jackal's plan. That was the only reason Lockman could think of for why the alien hadn't killed him yet. It could have if it had wanted to. It was banking on turning him in for a reward.

Lockman didn't know what the Covenant would do for the warrior who turned in a live human prisoner, but it had to be a desirable reward to give a Jackal pause who would sooner eat a man than interrogate him. Maybe a promotion to Major.

Low ranking Jackals were treated like refuse. Their Majors weren't much better off, but from what he'd heard, at least they got fresh air and real food from time to time. That could be a prize in itself. He could run with that—make the Jackal see that it might be worth his time to keep the prisoner alive.

But first...

"STATIONKEEPING, LOW-PROFILE," he typed into his tacpad. "STANDBY POWER."

Fragmented text scrolled rapidly across his wrist in reply. The drone had heard him. It was still out there somewhere, keeping watch over the little pod with its single remaining missile. The thought brought Lockman some comfort. At least he wasn't quite alone out here. There was always one last card to play.

Rez perked up, watching him closely. The plasma pistol warmed up with a high-pitched hum.

"What you doing?" he inquired hostilely. He remembered the human's earlier threat, but never seriously expected him to make good on it. The thought that the pilot was communicating with someone else out there made him uneasy.

"Nothing," Lockman replied, tapping away furiously.

"What you doing?" Rez demanded again, rising to his feet.

"I'm not doing anything!" the human insisted, dropping the pad to his side and raising his empty palms. "Take it easy." His eyes flitted to the plasma pistol and back.

Rez's eyes hardened.

"You doing something!" he shrieked, racing over and seizing Lockman's computer-adorned wrist. He grabbed the flexible device and shook it violently, trying to dislodge it. "Tell me what you doing! Or I kill you!"

Lockman gasped as the pain in his shoulder was renewed, but he did not resist. His plan depended on appearing docile and helpless.

"Okay! Okay! I'll tell you!" The pain in his voice wasn't feigned. "I was calling my ship! I have to tell it not to destroy us!"

Rez's eyes widened, and he glanced over his shoulder involuntarily.

"Did you tell?" He demanded. _"Did you tell not?"_

"Yes!" Lockman keened. "I reprogrammed it! Let go of me, please!"

Rez didn't wholly trust that explanation, but he released the human's arm. He brought up his plasma pistol and shoved its glowing green tip in Lockman's face.

The pilot flinched, but carried on his grovelling act.

"Why you do that?" Rez wanted to know. "Why it want to kill you?"

"I know stuff," Lockman explained morosely. "I'm a UNSC pilot. I know important secrets in my head. My ship knows that, so it wants to kill me before I tell."

Rez stared him down impassively, so Lockman took it as an invitation to continue. He was sweating now, not just in part from the radioactive heat crackling from the glowing green tip of the plasma pistol only inches from his face.

"I don't want to die, okay?" he said, wagering on the same gambit that he'd already attempted with some success. "If you don't kill me, I'll talk. I'll tell you secrets. Very valuable, I promise! You will be—."

_SMACK. _The attack was so sudden that Lockman never saw it coming. He fell to the deck, spurting blood from his thrice-broken nose.

_"You think I stupid?"_ Rez howled. _"You think I fall for again? _You just try to trick me again!"

The plasma pistol flared nova-bright, overcharging. The temperature in the escape pod spiked dramatically.

"No! You not stupid!" Lockman pleaded, pushing himself into the corner as far back as he could. "I not trick you! I promise!"

"You think I want you secrets?" Rez spat, advancing menacingly, his elongated face full of rage. "What secrets you have? I know your everything! I fight UNSC, I have prisoners before! They tell Rez all! So what you have, heretic? What you have?"

Lockman wet his lips, afraid to his core of what he was about to say. He'd pushed the Jackal too far. He knew there was only one thing he could possibly say to save his life. He stopped up his ears—he didn't want to hear himself say it. He hoped his family would forgive him.

"I know the location of the human homeworld," he sobbed. "I can tell you where it is. I can tell you where to find Earth!"

Rez stopped. The ball of plasma in his fist flickered and went out. He hadn't considered this.

The human homeworld—Earth. Not one of the humans in his possession had ever made such an offer before. And even under torture, not one had ever given accurate coordinates. It was thought among the Covenant that the humans did not entrust that secret to their warriors, for just such a reason.

But this one was a pilot. He flew their heretical ships. Surely a pilot would need to know that kind of information?

If it were so, this was a prize of incalculable value. The war could be ended in a month. The human homeworld could be razed to the ground and their forces scattered. And he, _Shipmaster _Rez, would be the hero who had revealed this element to the Hierarchs in their darkest hour. Generations of Kig-Yar would sing his praises. He would be allowed to breed, sire offspring to continue his lineage.

Momentarily dazzled by these visions of glory, he let his skepticism fall. _What if it were true?_ Never before in all their established history of cunning conquest had a Kig-Yar held such a great prize in his claws.

"You tell to me," he insisted, half-raising the pistol. "Tell me where to find your _Erth."_

Lockman took a deep breath and shook his head. He knew he was making a gamble.

"I will tell to you, but only after I am on your ship. I want to be a prisoner, understand? I don't want to die."

"Tell me now or I will kill you!" Rez threatened half-heartedly. He'd already sensed that the Human would try something of the sort. He knew that as a lowly Salvage Master, he was in no position to make terms, but he had to make the human think he was. He wanted the treasure for himself—not to have it be stolen by some stinking Jiralhanae.

"If you kill me," Lockman explained breathlessly, "you won't have what I know. You have to take me with you."

Rez weighed the proposition in his mind. The Fleetmaster would want to interrogate the prisoner himself. It was risky, but as long as he stayed with the human and did not let it out of his sight once aboard the _Master of Resolve, _he could still take the credit for the discovery. He did not think for a minute that the Sangheili wouldn't steal the credit for himself if allowed, nor did he anticipate a warm welcome after the destruction of his own vessel.

But if he played his cards carefully and made sure to emphasise the gravity of what he'd found as soon as his rescuers arrived, he might be able to come out ahead. It would take a little luck and a lot of cunning. Rez had both—and a very valuable treasure. So as much as he would have liked to melt the heretic creature's head from its shoulders, he knew that his fate was inextricably linked with the human's.

He reached a decision.

"You will tell us where to find the human world. If you not lie, you will feel the Prophet's mercy."

_And the shipmaster's blade, _he didn't add.

"Okay." Lockman nodded. "I accept."

_And when you realize I've played you, how will you react? _he wondered. He knew he was just prolonging the inevitable, but he thought he had the beginnings of a plan. The real danger lay in the fact that they might torture him regardless of what he said, and he might reveal the location of Earth anyway.

_Oh God, help me,_ he thought. _What if I do?_ He suddenly had his doubts. Images of gruesome torture and burning shame flashed through his mind. Would he be better off dead? There was still the drone...

But before he could make up his mind, the sudden appearance of a towering Elite in the pod almost caused his heart to break through the cast on his chest. He slammed his back to the wall and instinctively went for his gun. He found to his horror that it hadn't grown back yet.

Rez seemed disturbed himself. He quickly bowed to the deck in a gesture of subservience.

"Shipmaster Rez," the ghostly blue hologram spoke. "I have to say that I am not surprised. Where is the rest of your crew?"

"All dead, Fleetmaster," Rez said quickly. "We were set upon by human fighter craft as soon as we entered the system! But I alone have escaped with—"

The towering Sangheili silenced the Kig-Yar mercenary with a wave of his three-fingered hand.

"Be silent. I do not care to hear of your failures, Kig-Yar. I care only about what you have managed to accomplish despite your disgusting ineptitude. Were you able to complete your mission?"

"Yes, Fleet Master!" Rez practically shouted, eager for redemption. "I have in my possession a live human warrior! I present him to you as an offering of good faith!"

"Further proof of your incompetence," the Fleetmaster rumbled. "A living human is of no use to me. The prophets have already found what they seek. Burn the pod." He turned to someone off-screen and made a cutting gesture as though to signify that the conversation was at an end.

"No!" Rez howled, groveling on the floor of the pod. "Wait! The prophets will want this one alive! He has information that will be very valuable! The most valuable! I give him to you! I only ask my life!"

"Do you seek to bribe me, Kig-Yar?" the grizzled Sangheili growled. "You are a fool and an incompetent. You have lost one of _my _vessels without cause. That is as good as heresy! So tell me, mercenary, what information do you think is worth your life?"

"The location of the human home world, Fleetmaster!" Rez cried in desperation. "The planet called Earth that has eluded us for so long!"

Lockman watched breathlessly, hardly daring to move. He had no idea if the hologram was two-way, or if the Elite could see him. He didn't want to be noticed. For some reason, he could tell that to fall into the hands of this one was not at all a desirable prospect. He began to fumble for his tacpad.

The Elite gave a funny sort of split-jawed smile. It lacked any sign of mirth—a predator's smile.

"Very well. We shall draw you in to the landing bay. There we shall see what your fellow heretic has to say for himself."

The hologram winked out. The pod grew silent. Lockman was distinctly aware of a deep thrumming in the walls—a gravity projector. They were being drawn into a Covenant ship!

He and the Jackal shared a glance. Their expressions mirrored the other. Somehow, each knew that this was not the rescue that they'd been hoping for.


	10. Heretic, Hero

**1300, August 16, 2552, Erandus System**

Rez's head swam at the Fleetmaster's harsh rebuke. What had the Sangheili called him?

_Incompetent, heretic: _the accusations stung. The wily Jackal bore no illusions—he knew he'd just heard his death sentence pronounced. This was no salvation.

Another jolt rocked the pod. The cruiser's gravity beam had them. They were being drawn inexorably in toward the ship's docking bay.

Pressing his face to the small round peephole in the escape pod's hatch, he could just make out the ominous purple silhouette of the Covenant cruiser looming like a silent thunderhead. Tiny blue running lights flickered along its dark hull, lending the curved craft an ethereal quality.

As he watched, an iris-shaped portal opened up on the belly of the ship as it silently rolled to meet the tiny pod. Purple strobes lit up in the dark; ever-shrinking concentric circles of pulsing light guiding the pod in for a landing. The opening grew at an alarming pace: first the size of a pin, then a fist, then big enough to swallow a whole phantom.

The stars were rapidly blotted out by the imposing mass of the cruiser, filling his entire field of view as the pod was drawn closer. Soon, the outlines of phantom dropships were visible in the purple-lit opening. It wouldn't be much longer before the pod touched down inside the bay.

Rez began to panic, snarling to himself and biting his claws in agitation. This hadn't been what he'd wanted. He ought to have been returning victorious at the helm of his own vessel, _Time of Harvest,_ not trapped here in an escape pod like some stinking coward. Now he was as good as a prisoner.

And speaking of prisoners...

"Are you kidding me?" the human, _Keeth_, complained. "You didn't tell me that your boss was a goddamn _Elite!"_ His face was white and he clenched and unclenched his fists in the strange unconscious manner that humans took when agitated. "Elites don't take prisoners, man!"

"Quiet!" Rez hissed, clutching a claw to his temple. "I must think!"

"Think?" the human retorted, getting shakily to his feet. "We're outta time! You heard him, he's gonna kill both of us!"

"Quiet! Or you die!" Rez screeched, pointing the plasma pistol at the pilot.

"I'm dead either way!" The human made a sudden lunge for the pistol.

Surprised, Rez threw himself backward against the pod wall, wrestling the plasma pistol away from his groping hands. Still, he held his fire. The human was all he had left to exchange for his life.

"Stop!" he squawked. "What you doing? You want die?"

"Give me the gun!" the human roared. He stuck his thumb in Rez's eye and made another grab for the plasma weapon.

Rez decided he'd had enough. Flexing his torso, he pivoted and slammed his adversary against the wall with enough force to knock him senseless. The weakened human's skull bounced off the bulkhead with an audible crack and he dropped like a headshot Unggoy.

Rez peeled the human's slack fingers off of his wrist with a disdainful flick.

"What you do, huh?" he taunted, lashing out in his frustration. "You kill all crew with one plasma pistol? You demon now? No, you _stupid _now!"

He lashed out with a vicious kick to the human's lacerated ribs. The pilot gave a sharp grunt of pain. Rez spat on the deck tiles victoriously.

It was almost as though the heretic filth had begun to think himself equal with Rez. As if their unpleasant interment together in an escape pod meant anything. Rez had not forgotten how the human had humiliated him in front of his crew. He told himself that he would kill the disgusting, faithless creature in a second if he needed to. Theirs was an arrangement of convenience, not virtue.

As he stared down at the human, struggling to rise, he felt no pity. Just revulsion. How had it come to this? Whose fault was it that he had been denied the glory that he deserved?

A hot ball of hate rose from the pit of his stomach. It all made sense now. It was the human's fault! He'd done this! He was mocking him, plotting against him! He'd been playing him for a fool all along, hoping for the last laugh!

Rez screamed. In his fury, he fell on the defenseless pilot, kicking, biting and clawing. Lockman tried to resist, but he was too tired, dehydrated and weak to put up a fight. He submitted to the beating, curling up in a ball to protect himself. Every punch and kick was keenly felt in his damaged organs.

It was all he could do to keep from whimpering. This wasn't the way he'd ever thought he'd go out. He'd joined as a pilot—he was supposed to be above it all! Death, if it came, was supposed to come in a blaze of glory, shot down fighting heroically against a superior foe. To be beaten to death by this cowardly creature was contemptible.

He tried to rise to his hands and knees, but a blow to the midsection doubled him over in a fit of frenzied coughing. Blood spattered the deck plate.

He tried again, with the same result. Finally, he got the message—stay down.

The human went limp under Rez's clawed fists. Its feeble struggles ceased altogether. Disappointed, Rez gave a few more parting kicks. The human did not resist.

_Good._ That gave Rez some much-needed time to think. He sagged heavily against the wall, rubbing his temples furiously. His grey skin had begun to flush peach-colored, never a good sign. He was, for a member of his species, about as stressed as one could get.

His predatory instincts wanted to claw the walls, roving the pod smashing and biting. A lesser Kig-Yar would have fallen upon the captive in the pod, tearing him apart in an animalistic frenzy. But Rez knew that his evolutionary hunting instinct would not help him here. For this, he needed old-fashioned Kig-Yar guile.

What could he do to preserve his own life? The question haunted him. He'd lost a whole ship! He'd seen Elites execute their own kind for less—and he was but a mere Kig-Yar Minor—a Shipmaster, but a disposable servant nonetheless.

Surely his mission would be counted an abject failure. Despite the capture of a human prisoner, the loss of a ministry ship was a crime punishable by death. The only thing that could possibly make up for such a grievous oversight would be an equally valuable prize. And as Rez looked at the motionless human breathing raggedly on his deck, he knew that this prize wasn't it.

He wondered if he could convince the Fleetmaster that there was more to this human than met the eye. But that was foolishness—he doubted that even casting the prisoner as a defiler of Forerunner artifacts would be enough to turn the Fleetmaster's wrath away from him.

No, the only hope lay in appeal to a higher authority, even as he shuddered at the thought. San 'Shyuum 'justice' was unimaginably harsh. There was the punishment of the Eternal Excommunication and the pit of a Thousand Castigations, to name a few. The sight of the writhing Lekegolo worms rising to consume a screaming victim was not an image that Rez could easily forget. On the other hand, making an appeal to High Charity might buy Rez a few precious weeks to plot a defence. Here, his lifespan was measurable in minutes. He would have to try it.

It was no good waiting until the Fleetmaster's energy sword was at his throat to plead parley, either. He would have to act fast to save his own life. The human would die, but that was hardly Rez's concern, was it? His people had chosen heresy and had brought the wrath of the gods down upon themselves. They deserved no pity.

With trembling claws, Rez composed himself and keyed open a channel to the CSS _Master of Resolve._

To his surprise, instead of the Sangheili Fleetmaster, the holographic head and shoulders of a massive Jiralhanae Chieftain bristling with the ceremonial ornaments of his station appeared, dominating the pod. Rez took a step back unconsciously. The Brute seemed to look him over with disdain.

"What would you speak to the Fleetmaster about, Kig-Yar?" the massive Brute rumbled.

Rez was astonished enough that he forgot to answer the question.

"Who are you?" he asked quickly. "Where is the Fleetmaster?"

"The Fleetmaster is busy," the Brute Chieftain grunted. "The situation has changed. Remain in your pod and you will be met."

The Jiralhanae, Ragarus, who Rez now recognized as the Fleetmaster's imposing second-in-command, vanished from the holographic display. He began to tremble violently. To run afoul of the Fleetmaster was one thing—to anger a Brute warchief was another matter altogether. He hoped he hadn't come across as insolent—an Elite might run you through on his energy sword, but a Brute would knock your head across the ship with his gravity hammer for any perceived slight.

_The situation has changed. _What did that mean? Rez could only wonder. Suddenly, sitting in the cramped purple escape pod all by himself, Rez felt very unsure of himself. The human was no help—he was still unconscious, or wisely feigning it.

The pod bucked again, violently this time. In panic, Rez rushed to the porthole and peered out, realizing to his shock that the pod was now resting in the Cruiser's spacious port-side landing bay. Even more alarming was just how crowded the bay seemed. All levels of the bay were packed to bursting with crew.

Hundreds of Kig-Yar and gibbering Unggoy crowded the catwalks while the massive forms of Jiralhanae stood by, watching. Strangely, there were no Elites in attendance. Rez found that odd for some reason, but no stranger than the apparent turnout to witness his arrival. Stranger still, the assembled species did not seem to be shouting for his blood—it seemed more like... cheering?

_"SHIPMASTER!" _A thunderous voice reverberated through the cavernous bay. Rez started. The only Shipmaster in attendance was Ragarus, the Brute Chieftain he'd seen in the hologram. And he stood by impassively, surrounded by a ring of his Brute bodyguards. What was going on?

"_Shipmaster!_" the electronically amplified voice came again. "_COME FORTH!"_

It took Rez a full second to realize that the voice was talking about _him._ But that was impossible! By the rules of the Covenant military forces, for a Shipmaster to retain his title, he must possess a ship. And Rez had lost his.

But he could hardly ignore such a summons. What was this supposed to be? Was he being made a spectacle of for all the crew?

His grip tightened on the plasma pistol unconsciously. It tingled in his palm, signaling only one-third charge remaining. He slapped his thigh and growled. It was suicide. There was no way he could fight his way through this many onlookers with just a sidearm. He had to face the music.

Timidly, he keyed the door controls on the pod. The hatch shot open and Rez was instantly overwhelmed with a rising roar of approval from the assembled masses. He stood blinking stupidly in the sudden light, overcome by the onslaught of strange sights and noises.

One of the Brutes with silver fur, evidently the spokesman, stepped forward and raised a conical voice-projector to his lips.

"_SHIPMASTER!" _he roared, raising his arms high above his head, working the crowd. "_SHIPMASTER!"_

"_Shipmaster! Shipmaster!" _the crowd chanted, taking up the cry. _"Shipmaster!"_

Rez stood stunned. This was not the kind of welcome he'd expected. What was going on? He'd expected to be writhing on the tips of an energy sword by now, not hailed as some kind of hero!

He looked to the Brutes with a stupefied expression on his face. They looked back at him, mostly bored, as though the spectacle were just a minor annoyance. But the spokesman raised his voice again and beckoned with one massive paw.

"_Come! Bring your prize!"_

Dumbly, Rez ducked back into the pod. The human lay where he had fallen, crumpled on the smooth deck plate. The Jackal tried to pick him up, but the pilot's larger stature made carrying him awkward. Finally, Rez settled for grabbing a handful of the human's web harness and dragged him out, drawing him heavily over the lip of the escape pod and onto the Covenant ship.

The roar of the crowd grew to a deafening crescendo—mixed shouts of praise for Rez and hatred for the heretic human. For the first time, Rez noticed that the walls were pocked with fresh plasma scars. He swallowed a ball of something in his throat and pressed on, awkwardly dragging the human behind him.

The Brutes watched him impassively. He shied away from their eyes and instead looked down at the deck. The distance he covered couldn't have been more than a few meters, but it seemed as good as a mile.

Hesitantly, Rez drew up to the Brute Chieftain and deposited the lifeless human at his feet. Then he backed away, and acting on instinct, he bowed low, showing him a Fleetmaster's deference.

Evidently, the gesture pleased the large Jiralhanae. He rumbled in amusement and held up a great silver-furred hand for silence. The chatter did not slacken appreciably until a mauler was produced and fired into the deck with a gratifying _BANG_. Silence drew in immediately.

Ragarus—Rez recognized him now—held out his hand for the voice projector. With his other hand, he passed off his massive hammer. Two of his lesser Jiralhanae accepted it with reverence.

With a deep, throaty growl, he spoke.

"_Members of the Covenant! You know why we are here! The eve of the Great Journey is upon us!"_

At this proclamation, the crowd went absolutely wild. It took more than a gunshot to quiet the excited onlookers this time, and Rez realized that Ragarus had strategically placed his Brutes around the hanger bay for a reason.

_Great journey? _He stood stock still, entranced as he stared at a Kig-Yar writhing on the deck with its neck bent at an awkward angle. _Could it really be?_

_"This is a MOMENTOUS occasion!" _Ragarus thundered over the noise of the crowd. _"It is a time for celebration! But alas, in their great pride, the SANGHEILI tried to deny us our rightful place!"_

The assembled Covenant species roared and hissed, screaming for blood. Rez's stomach flopped. The Sangheili? Was that why there were none in attendance? Where had they all gone?

Ragarus grinned, seeming to feed off the energy of the crowd. He was riling them up, whipping their repressed tensions into a frenzy.

_"But we, the Jiralhanae, were NOT fooled! Acting on the Prophet's instructions, we have purged the apostates from our midst!"_

A murmur swept through the crowd. Even Rez found himself leaning in, paying attention. The Prophets? Were not the Elites their protectors, their favored acolytes? What would prompt the Sangheili to plot such a betrayal?

_"Now I bring good news to you, brothers! The Prophets have discovered the gate to infinity! The way to the Great Journey lies open before us! We have only to walk the path!" _

He turned to Rez, placing a massive hand on the Jackal's frail shoulder. The weight bore him down even deeper to the floor. Rez tensed, expecting the Chieftain to reveal it all as an elaborate ruse, but he did not.

_"All praise to Shipmaster Rez, who has brought us a Key in the form of this human, the ones who the gods so paradoxically refer to as 'Reclaimers'!_"

The gallery cheered. This time, Ragarus did not stop them.

Rez's eyes widened, and he surreptitiously glanced over at the supine human. Green eyes met his, and he knew that the human was only pretending to be unconscious. His former cellmate wordlessly implored him for information, but Rez could only shrug.

It dawned on him that he had somehow beaten the odds. For whatever reason, today was the day that the Covenant had decided to turn itself on its head. He thanked the Forerunners in his heart and tried to appear suitably worthy.

He rose as far as he dared and offered the appropriate gesture of faith, claw across his heart. The old Jiralhanae snorted and pushed him back to his knees, surreptitiously enough that no one aside from Rez noticed, but hard enough to hurt.

_"We hasten now to the Ark to fight the final battle against the unholy parasite and the heretic humans who would deny us our prize!" _Ragarus bellowed. _"The great journey awaits all who will fight—and who better to captain the assault than the one the gods have chosen?"_

Rez was hoisted bodily, eyes wide and kicking at the deck as one of his hands was forcibly raised in victory. The crowd roared its approval.

Rez's eyes bulged out of his head. _The parasite?_ This was no honor, this was a death mission!He shook his head again and again, protesting loudly, but the crowd only roared all the louder.

Ragarus grinned savagely, watching him wriggle.

"Congratulations, Major," he said for Rez's benefit only. "It seems that the people have spoken. It is a great honor to die on the Path."

None too gently, he flung the Kig-Yar aside. Ambling over to the battered human, he nudged its fallen form with one toe. His nostrils flared as he sniffed the air.

"This filth is alive," he muttered, turning to his silver-backed second-in-command. "No matter. Take him to the infirmary. Bandage his wounds. Ensure that he does not die on the way. Then he may join the others."

"Would it not be better to interrogate him first, my Chieftain?" the subservient Brute asked reverently.

"It would _not," _Ragarus grumbled, rolling his massively thick neck as though his plasma scars pained him. "The Prophets need this creature alive. For what reason, I do not know. A fleet-wide order has been issued. We must bring it in whole."

"As you wish," the smaller Brute rumbled. He stooped to pick up the limp human pilot.

"Whole does not mean undamaged, Falal," Ragarus admonished with a grim laugh. "You may do with him what you wish—as long as he survives the act."

"With pleasure, my Chieftain."

"Hey!" Rez squawked anxiously rising from the deck. Greed compelled him. He saw his profits slipping away before his eyes. "What about my reward?"

Falal growled deep in his throat and half turned to meet the reticent Jackal. He reached for the Spiker at his belt—but another hand found it first.

Lockman's eyes shot open. He tugged on the butt of the ultra-heavy pistol, and managed to draw it about halfway out of its sheath. Falal reached down and effortlessly broke his arm.

The ensuing scream was long and heartfelt. Rez took the opportunity to make himself scarce, darting away and blending into the crowd. His heart raced as the pained cries faded away down the corridor.

_Better him than me,_ he thought. Despite himself, he actually felt a warm glow bubbling up from within his chest. He'd beat the game and won! He was alive, _and _a Major to boot!

Then he remembered the Chieftain's proclamation and despaired. Lead the assault against the parasite? That was suicide! He'd been set up to die as surely as before a firing squad. He didn't want to be turned by those unholy monstrosities! Rumor had it that those who the Flood devoured would remain behind in the time of the Great Journey, stayed by their heresy. That was the Chieftain's plan all along, Rez was sure of it. He had not escaped execution after all—just prolonged it.

Even thankless piracy was preferable to this! Rez would have given anything to be returned to his ship and sent on his way. He cursed the very sight of the ruined Cruiser. Why did everything have to end this way? Was he not entitled to his own choices?

He needed a plan. He needed to get off this ship and back into Kig-yar space. For that, he would need co-conspirators—and privacy. Glancing around furtively to make sure he wasn't being missed, Rez slunk away down an open corridor, leaving the escape pod and the cheering crowd behind. He had much to do and little time to accomplish it in.


	11. See the Galaxy, Meet New People

**1400, August 13, 2252, Planet XR-38**

When it was all over, Spartan Bryce-056 got slowly to his feet. The surprising thing was that he was breathing hard. The process of interrogation had taken a lot from him.

Snow sifted over the ground, covering up the unsightly red blotches that he'd wrung from the girl. He took a moment to breathe, staring up at the dimming sky through his polarized faceplate. Interrogations were never pleasant, and this one had been no exception.

In the end, he'd broken three of the girl's fingers and inflicted an unknowable amount of mental trauma upon her to get what he wanted. The true extent of the harm he'd done probably wouldn't show up until months later. She'd need to see a UNSC psychologist.

'Enhanced Interrogation' they called it. Torture. He'd tortured the girl.

He didn't regret it—as a member of a terrorist organization, she was the enemy of peaceful civilization. Still, that didn't mean he'd enjoyed it. It had just been necessary.

He wasn't so naive as to think that the ends never justified the means. She was an enemy of the UNSC, and the information he'd gleaned from her was interesting to say in the least. Interesting enough to risk communication with the ONI spy ship currently in orbit over the planet.

"Sierra Six to Buoyant," he reported, extending the whip-like radio antenna from his armored pack. "Radio check."

There was none of the usual static wash that came with establishing a radio connection. Immediately, the postage-stamp-sized figure of the Prowler's captain sprung up in his HUD, leaning forward in anticipation. Apparently, he'd been missed.

"We read you Sierra, go ahead."

Bryce flared his nostrils but quickly recovered his bearing. He gave the Commander a quick rundown of his situation, all the way up to arriving at the checkpoint and his capture of the prisoner.

"And?" the Commander asked pensively, "What did you learn?"

"It's Innies, sir," Bryce reported. "Looks like sabotaging the slipspace array was their idea."

"Are you sure?" The ONI officer's brow furrowed mightily. He looked deeply vexed by the revelation. Bryce wondered why.

"Yes sir. I have tentatively identified the prisoner's unit and affiliation by the paraphernalia in her possession. The rest came less easily and as a result of interrogation."

He helpfully activated the recording module on his helmet and directed the camera down to his feet where the woman's possessions were spread out on the snow. There was a good deal of obsolescent 21st century military gear, and among it all, an insurrection-style identification card that identified the trooper as Corporal Felicia J. Emmet of the United Rebel Front, an aggressive militant branch of the Insurrectionist movement.

Amusingly, there were also a number of pamphlets detailing the methods whereby UNSC service members could defect to the insurrection if captured. A few hypodermic needles and a small black notebook filled with inscrutable sketches rounded out the cache, and these he duly pocketed as captured intelligence.

"Did you discover the purpose of her mission here?" the Commander wanted to know.

"Yes sir," Bryce replied calmly. "That was just about the only thing that she's been forthcoming about. She states that her mission was expansionary only. The URF intends to set up a base in this sector, and XR-38 is one of several planetoids under consideration. The existence of the signal array was not discovered until her party made landfall. They destroyed it accidentally while attempting to cover their tracks."

"Vandalism then?" The Commander frowned. "How very like them. Little better than organized thugs." He scratched his chin nonchalantly. Bryce found the sudden change in his demeanor vaguely unsettling. His tone sounded almost _too _disinterested, almost like he was putting on a front.

"Yes sir," he responded cautiously. Was he supposed to agree?

"Do you think she's telling the truth?" the Commander asked, almost conversationally.

Bryce blinked. _Why are you asking me this? _he wondered. This was a high-priority flash transmission detailing sensitive military information, not a fireside chat. Not to mention that the open radio frequency placed him at greater risk of discovery with every passing second. Still, it was an officer asking, so it was his duty to answer.

He wet his lips and replied thoughtfully.

"Sir, I would venture that the accidental discovery of a highly-classified UNSC relay station would be at the extreme edge of coincidence. I would conjecture that the Insurrection had some sort of knowledge of this station beforehand, and that its presence here may even have factored in to their decision to construct a base on this planet. I doubt that the prisoner was entirely honest, but there is probably some truth to her story, sir."

The commander didn't reply immediately. Bryce took a deep breath and waited, resisting the urge to fill the silence with words. Was this some kind of test?

"Roger, Sierra. We will bear your opinion in mind."

_What? _Bryce thought. _That's it?_

"Sir," he said quickly, "what are my orders concerning the prisoner?"

There was a long pause. Something over the Commander's shoulder seemed to be vying for his attention. Though Bryce craned his head, he couldn't see what the commotion was.

"That's your concern, Sierra. Use your discretion and proceed with your mission. Next radio check is at 0840 hours. Good luck, _Buoyant _out."

The connection broke with a pop, leaving Bryce standing all alone in the snowdrift with more questions than answers. Hardly an unusual state for the self-sufficient Spartan, but an unwelcome one, all the same.

'Use your discretion', the ONI rep had said. Was that a veiled command to dispose of the prisoner couched in upper-echelon deniability? He'd been around the block long enough to know that sometimes such acts were necessary, despite what the code of military justice said about it. Or was the Commander graciously offering him the choice?

More likely, it was the former. A 'suggestion' from ONI carried all the weight of a lawful order. He mulled it over in his mind. The Innie's heated glare wasn't helping much. He could feel her hateful eyes boring into his back as he conversed with the prowler.

Of course, she'd heard nothing of the exchange contained inside his helmet and he'd been very careful with what he'd portrayed through his body language, but she had to have known that he wasn't just standing there silently. She'd probably guessed that he was calling home. Maybe she'd even guessed that he was talking about her.

In any case, he'd reached a decision. The prisoner's worth was in her usefulness. When that usefulness ran out, he'd dispose of her. Until then, he had a few more questions to ask.

He had to have looked like a giant as he stalked back over to where the prisoner lay. Bound hand and foot with plastic ties, it was all she could do to prop herself up enough to look up at him.

She was shivering violently, he saw. From cold or from fear, he couldn't tell. As he drew close, he noticed that she'd somehow managed to free her hands while his back was turned, and that she was only pretending to keep them bound behind her back.

_Interesting. _Probably not fear, then. He wondered how she'd done it.

He found out a moment later when she lunged at him with a small penknife that she thrust at the gap between his armored chest plate and his helmet. It probably wouldn't have penetrated his bodysuit, but he reacted instinctively. He tucked in his chin and the tiny blade skittered off the jaw section of his helmet.

He didn't wish to hurt her further, but enough was enough. He grabbed her arm in a cobra-quick movement and twisted it behind her back to the point of excruciating pain. She cried out, muffled through the gag, and tried to twist away.

He did it again, this time dislocating her arm with an unhealthy pop.

"Stay down," he whispered, his voice low and intimidating through his voice filter.

This time, she got the message. He held her there until her struggles ceased, and then eased up the pressure, still keeping a firm grip on her arm in case she tried something else.

"I don't want to hurt you," he muttered, still on the lookout for trouble. "But if you resist me, I will."

She muttered something inaudible that sounded like sarcasm, clutching her broken hand to her chest. Bryce ignored it.

"It's time for you to listen to me very carefully. What you do in the next five minutes will be the deciding factor in whether you even live that long."

The Innie grew quiet and he sensed that he had her attention.

"Good. Now listen closely: I want you to tell me everything you can about how your forces are deployed around the relay station. I want unit strength, the locations of all defenses, patrol schedules, heavy weapons emplacements—everything. Depending on how cooperative you are, I will do good things for you in return. The scope and scale of that treatment depends on the quality of your information."

He paused poignantly. Now came the tricky part. He had to convince her that cooperation was the best choice, the _only _choice.

"Lying or withholding information from me will do you no good. I am an agent of the Office of Naval Intelligence. As of right now, you no longer exist. Do you understand what I'm saying? We can do whatever we want with you and nobody will even blink."

He saw her stiffen at the mention of ONI. _Good. _It was gratifying to see that even Insurrectionists feared the bogeyman. And rightly so—he wasn't lying. He really could do whatever he wanted with the girl. Thanks to a slick bit of lobby work, the Innies were classified as terrorists, not enemy combatants, and therefore not covered by the Geneva Convention or UNSC rules of engagement.

He sensed that it was time to pose the question.

"Your friends cannot help you. They are already dead. Whether or not you join them is up to you. Working with me is the only hope you have. So... will you work with me, Felicia?"

This was the final play in the interrogation game, and the most dangerous. If he'd read her wrong, she'd be spoiled.

But he hadn't. He watched the conflict rage behind her eyes: first panic, then confusion followed by rage and denial. Then finally... acceptance.

Hot tears welled up in her eyes and then—she nodded.

_Gotcha. _That was how interrogation was done. He'd been trained by the best. It was true, what they said: you really could trap more flies with honey.

"That was the right choice," he said, putting a conciliatory note into his voice. "You're very smart to trust me. I'm going to take the tape off now and we'll talk for a few minutes."

He waited for her consent and then reached for the corner of the long strip of tape over her mouth. He peeled it off—gently this time—and sat back, letting her catch her breath.

He expected cursing and anger to pour forth as soon as the gag came off, but her first request was surprisingly pragmatic.

"It's cold," she ground out through chattering teeth. "Can I have that blanket back?"

"No," he said, shaking his head. "Answers first."

"I can't give you any bloody answers if I'm bloody freezing to death you bloody jackboot!" she hissed, slurring her words slightly and seemingly oblivious to her repetition.

Bryce quietly checked her body temperature with the sensor package in his helmet. _Ah, okay. _It really was dangerously low. There wasn't any sense in allowing her to freeze.

"Here," he said, tossing her the blanket. It was soaking wet, but she accepted it gratefully all the same and wrapped it tightly around her shoulders. He watched her try to get comfortable under the frozen shawl. It wasn't easy.

"Now," he said, "Let's start small. How many are you?"

"Eleven," she said, shaking still. "Everybody else got off the planet when the Covies showed up in orbit."

Alarm bells went off in Bryce's head. That didn't make sense. Covenant forces _and _insurrectionists? Were they working together?

"The Covenant are here?"

"Yeah. Isn't that why you're here?"

"Maybe." Bryce's mind was racing a mile a minute, trying to parcel this new information. But he kept his body posture an outward mask of calm. "What can you tell me about the Covenant here?"

"Not much," she muttered. "One of their cruisers—a little one—showed up over the planet. Hailed us and ordered us to leave the surface in exchange for clear passage. Some did—some stayed."

"What happened to the ones who left?" Bryce asked, feeling that the story was getting stranger every minute.

"What do you think?" the Insurrectionist chuckled mirthlessly. "Those alien freaks shot them out of the sky as soon as they cleared atmosphere. Serves them right. Damn Covenant never honors their deals."

She collapsed into a fit of wet coughing as soon as she'd said this, and Bryce worried that she'd pass out before he'd got the whole story out of her.

"Come," he said, extending his arms and sitting down cross-legged in the snow. She looked at him like he'd just sprouted another head. "Come here," he said more forcefully, to show that he wasn't playing around. "Share my body heat. You're a soldier, Corporal. This is basic survival craft."

For a moment, it seemed like she might outright refuse, but she couldn't deny the pragmatism of the offer. The temperature was well below zero, and the wind was picking up. Reluctantly, the female insurrectionist crawled over and sat down in his armored embrace.

Moving mechanically so as not to alarm her, Bryce pulled her close to his chest and wrapped the blanket around them both. Raising his armor's external temperature was easy enough, and soon they were both sitting comfortably.

"Continue," he said, sensing the need to distract his charge from their sudden closeness, and also conscious that time was of the essence. He was unable to see past the situational necessity, but he acknowledged that a non-Spartan might find this proximity uncomfortable.

Felicia—the insurrectionist—seemed to be having trouble collecting herself. He didn't blame her. He was seven feet and one ton of hard, angular power armor that quite realistically could crush her to death with his bare hands if he'd wanted to.

This wasn't working. He needed to secure her cooperation. And for that, he needed her to see past the walking death machine. And if part of that meant giving up a little of his Spartan mystique, he considered it a worthwhile trade-off.

Reaching up, he hooked a finger under the lip of his helmet seal. Bluebell was there in an instant.

"Warning! Removing your protective headgear in a combat zone is a violation of military protocol FP23560A!"

"Override," Bryce said brusquely.

"—and additionally stands to decrease your protective posture by a factor of 32% with the loss of total ballistic, thermal and auditory protection, in addition to other undesirable loss of performance."

"Bluebell, override code 'SANDPIPER'," Bryce said with growing frustration. What was wrong with his AI? She was acting strangely on this op, almost combative.

Her blue flower avatar flickered ghost-like in the corner of his HUD. Red text appeared: 'OVERFLOW ERROR CODE 56012'.

Bluebell disappeared, apparently into a recovery state. The icon displaying his suit's seal status remained frustratingly orange.

"Blue!" he snapped. "Bluebell!"

There was no reply. He smacked the side of his helmet in irritation. Hell of a time for his AI to malfunction. He'd send her down for a full diagnostic the next time he had the chance.

In the meantime, he reached up and found the knob that controlled his visor polarization. It was all automatic. He didn't need an AI to manage that.

He brought the polarization down to about 60%, just enough to reveal the ghostly face of a man behind the thick orange-tinted visor. He saw the woman go tense as she noticed what he'd done. People tended to forget that underneath all that armor, there was a human being in control.

"Now," he said, making himself as comfortable as the situation allowed. "Tell me what you know about the Covenant. Why are they here?"

"The Covenant," she said, actually sounding relieved. "Right. What do you want to know?"

"Start with why they're here," Bryce repeated slowly. Her vitals showed that she was on the edge of shock. He shifted ever so slightly to bring her into contact with the maximum amount of surface area on his warming armor. "Did they say anything? Exact words?"

"I don't remember," she said briskly. "'Heretics must die, profaners of the holy place must burn,' something like that. Same shit they always say." She offered him a rueful glare. "They're not exactly friendly with us either, you know."

"They're the enemy of all humanity. That's why we must band together and present a united front," Bryce found himself saying, even as his mind travelled down a different track. What was that she'd said just now? Holy place?

"Yeah, you can go take that Earth-supremacy crap and shove it up your ass," she spat, squirming to get out of his grasp.

Bryce tightened his grip on her shoulders perceptibly; not enough to harm her, but effectively restraining the resistant insurrectionist.

"Stay," he commanded.

"Piss off! I've got no choice!"

Bryce leveled his eyes with hers, allowing his visor to fade back into ominous opacity.

"You do have a choice. You can help me and live to see another day. Or you can keep it up and die here. Your choice."

It was a statement of fact, delivered in a cold monotone that left no room for argument. She continued to struggle anyway, holding his gaze defiantly, even though she couldn't help but tremble as she stared into the eyes of every rebel's living nightmare.

"Fine," she spat, not once breaking contact with where she assumed his eyes were. "What else can I _help _you with?"

The Spartan's eyes were in fact focused on a topographical map of the relay site projected on the inside of his HUD, but he got the message loud and clear. She wasn't interested in helping the UNSC. She was out for revenge on the Covenant raiders who'd destroyed her squad.

"You can start by telling me more about the Covenant forces here on this planet. Are they still here? When did they arrive?"

"Two days ago. As far as I know, they're still here. I mean, they haven't left."

"Where?" Bryce said, feeling suddenly uncomfortable in the dark woods. He checked to make sure that his motion tracker was still active. It was, but he was still getting weird sensor ghosts from the falling snow.

"On top of the hill, by the relay station. You can see the lights at night. They're doing something."

"Doing what?"

"Hell if I know," she said bitterly. "Their patrols won't let us anywhere near the mountain. They've got those Jackals spread out all around the camp with long-range scopes. Whenever they see us, they send out capture teams to hunt us down. We lost two guys yesterday crossing the river."

Bryce nodded. He knew all about the cool lethality of the Covenant's Jackal sniper teams. They liked to work in pairs, covering a wide area with their unblinking far-sighted eyes.

"How many are there?"

"I already told you—I don't know."

"Take your best guess."

"As many as they can pack into one of those big purple ships of theirs, I guess. They've got dropships going back and forth all the time." She frowned and spat in the snow. "There, does that help you?"

Bryce appraised her coolly. He wondered what game she was playing. Her hostility was back-and-forth, like she was unsure of something. It was like she was putting on a show of defiance for some unseen benefactor.

Bryce's blood ran cold as he suddenly remembered that he'd forgot to ask her a very important question.

"Felicia, what were you doing out on the ice?"

She glared up at him, suddenly wary.

"Are you stupid? What did it look like? I was gathering firewood!"

The sudden change in her face gave away everything that Bryce suspected, but he needed to be sure.

"_Alone, _Corporal. Why were you alone? In full view of the hilltop?"

He felt her go stiff in his arms, and he recognized the need to move, _now_. In one unceremonious movement, he dumped her to the snow and stood, drawing his sidearm and sweeping the clearing.

"Ow! Bastard!" she cursed, starting to crawl away.

Bryce ignored her. He was more interested in the way the trees were moving. No—not trees. People. There were ten of them, decked out head-to-toe in snow-colored strips of fabric creeping slowly toward him from every direction, blocking all avenues of escape. _How had he missed them?_

They carried rifles—DMRs, and MA5Cs—old UNSC castoffs, camouflaged in a similar manner. Moving slowly, they were almost invisible to the naked eye.

Smart. It might have worked on a deer. But he was no prey—he was a Spartan.

In an eye-blink, he exploded from his place in the snow, pushing off with all his might and leaping straight upwards. Even standing in knee-deep snow, ten vertical meters was no difficult feat for a Spartan with the assistance of a jump pack, and he made the leap with ease, placing himself in the lowest hanging branches of one of the thick pines overhead.

With a deft motion, he hauled himself up on a thick limb and shimmied along its length until he was in a position to jump to the next tree. Muffled shouts rang out below, but no gunfire tracked him. That was fine with him.

Spreading his arms wide, Bryce leaped to the next tree, slamming into the thick trunk with his fingers outstretched like claws. The big tree creaked under his weight, but he dug his fingers into the bark and held on. If he'd had the time, he might have reflected on the irony of his situation: being forced into a tree to escape his hunters, but he was occupied with the business of escape. What's more, he was out of the circle.

He jumped down out of the tree with a heavy thud, making a deep impression in the snow. As soon as his feet found purchase, he was up and running again, throwing up snow behind him like white water. Even without his trekking gear, the Spartan was almost as fast as a snowshoe hare, and he quickly outdistanced his clumsy pursuers.

Their cursing faded away behind him as he ran, darting through the trees as quickly as he dared, keeping an eye on his motion tracker for any more surprises. He planned to put some distance between himself and his pursuers and double back, catching them by surprise.

That plan lasted only five more steps until he suddenly came face to face with a rather surprised looking Jackal. Instinct took over. He seized the Jackal with both hands, working it like a wind-up toy, snapping its neck cleanly and tossing it aside. It looked up at him, awe and surprise still evident on its face.

Bryce snarled something unintelligible. The whole afternoon had just gone belly-up in a the span of five minutes. The plan was a bust—he needed to regroup with _Buoyant _and think of something else.

But fate had other plans for him. Evidently, his scuffle in the treetops hadn't gone unnoticed. A keening roar that set his teeth on edge filled the air as a pair of Banshee fliers came screaming low over the trees.

Bryce immediately threw himself down into the snow, probably saving his life as the lead flier loosed a glowing green orb of plasma that impacted a tree right beside him, splintering it into a thousand smoldering pieces. For a moment, spring returned as the snow for twenty meters flash-vaporized and vanished in a cloud of steam. His shield indicator screamed warning, reduced by over half.

The Spartan rolled to unlimber his rifle, but found only air where the assault carbine should have rested against his back. He'd lost it somewhere in the struggle, or perhaps left it back in the clearing. His photographic memory flashed him a picture of the black rifle leaning against a tree stump, barrel clear of the snow and ready to be fired. Totally useless to him now.

He jumped to his feet and opened fire with his magnum sidearm, noting with displeasure how the low-velocity bullets simply sparked and ricocheted off of the bulbous fliers without doing any real damage. But the diving Banshees banked away, showing uncommon caution as their Elite pilots recognized that they were taking ground fire. They drew off, climbing into the sun, effectively placing themselves out of range of his weapon while staying free to strafe him at their leisure.

Bryce evaluated his options and decided to run. This was not a fight he could stand to lose. Another direct hit from the Banshees' plasma cannons would vaporise him.

"Bluebell!" he panted, dodging into the shadow of a tree as the purple planes circled lazily overhead. "Get me an exit solution, fallback to waypoint India!"

A blue light winked an affirmative, and a small directional marker appeared, showing the way back to one of the previously designated checkpoints he'd noted for an abundance of overhead cover. There was a deep ravine there. If he could make it back, he would be safe from the Banshees, but that was a lot of open ground to cover, in the snow, no less. But he'd have to chance it, because the alternative was...

_CRACK_.

The thunder of an S2-AM anti-material rifle pierced the air and echoed down the valley. Bryce froze where he stood and slowly sank down to his haunches. If someone was shooting off a cannon like that, it was a good idea to stay put until you knew which direction the fire was coming from.

_CRACK. _

The thunder came again, this time accompanied by a change in pitch from the lead Banshee's screaming thrust pods. Bryce risked a glance and saw the purple attack craft shudder violently, venting plasma as its pilot tried to regain control. Its stabilizer had been hit.

His first thought was_ rescue. _Perhaps a landing party from _Buoyant, _or a team of Recon marines deployed from the colonies. But both probabilities were equally unlikely. The Prowler carried no offensive capacity beyond a small security detail, and UNSC troops dispatched from the inner colonies would take days, if not weeks to arrive on planet. That left only the possibility of previously deployed or indigenous forces. And as the heavy thudding of a pre-expansion era machine gun filled the air, Bryce had a pretty good idea of who he was dealing with.

True to his expectations, he could see the outlines of the ghillie-material covered bush-men swarming through the trees, taking careful shots with an assortment of outdated weaponry. To his surprise, he saw a small cart being drawn by three men, and on it an ancient M2HB Browning machine gun, being used in an anti-aircraft role.

He raised an eyebrow. True, the Innies weren't exactly on the cutting edge of technology, but the Browning was a museum piece, dating as far back as the world wars, centuries ago. Still, the .50 caliber bullet it fired was a prodigious destroyer of aircraft, and probably Spartans too, Bryce realized, re-evaluating his camo.

He watched in cool astonishment as the Innies managed to bring down a Banshee flier and drive the other one away, at the cost of only two of their own. They seemed unusually well organized for rebels, taking full advantage of cover and firing in short, disciplined bursts. _Probably to save ammo, _Bryce thought. If the prisoner had told him anything like the truth, bullets would be in short supply for this rag-tag band.

How much had it cost them to bring down that Banshee, he wondered? Probably more than they could spare. Had it been for his sake? Probably not.

More likely, they'd been as surprised as he had by the sudden appearance of the Covenant fighters. It was a lucky break. Now was the time to make himself scarce. If they came after him next, it would be with everything in their arsenal. He needed to find shelter and make contact with his chain of command.

Slowly, he dropped down to a crawl and melted away into the shadow of the forest, leaving the Innies to hunt amongst the trees, searching for their quarry in vain. He'd got away. Now he just had to stay that way and hope that nobody else came hunting until he'd figured out what to do next.

His hand touched steel.

"What—," he began. Then suddenly, the world was a blur of crazy angles and disjointed points of view as he hurtled upward.

_Trap, _he realized vaguely, as high-tensile steel cables sprung up out of the snow all around him, ensnaring him completely. It was a trap!

A net. A crude animal trap with zero moving parts, and he'd crawled right into it. Now he was swaying crazily in a giant cargo net twenty feet off the ground with the Innies and the Covenant closing in. And where was his magnum?

He fought to orient himself, trying to get a grasp on his new upside-down world. His legs were above him somehow, tangled in the cables. His head was facing down, and his right arm was pinned under the weight of his own armor. To say that the mission had gone wrong would be an understatement. This was a catastrophe.

Glancing up, he tried to kick free. _Nope. _The cables were too thick. Just what had the rebels been trying to catch? All that his struggling accomplished was to make the cage swing wildly.

Something small and silvery flashed past. _Magnum._ He flung out his arm with all the speed his genetically-augmented muscles could muster and caught it by the oversized trigger guard.

Great—he was armed. But the smart linked weapon informed his HUD that it contained only two rounds of ammunition. With no way to reload it, he'd have to make both shots count. Carefully, he extended the magnum as best he could, aiming at the thick steel cable wrapped around his leg.

"Drop it, Spartan!" The voice came from directly beneath and carried the weight of command.

Bryce froze, unable to see the speaker from his awkward angle. But the voice had said 'Spartan', and not 'Demon', so he could only assume that his captors were human.

He slowly drew the magnum in to his chest where no one could see what he was doing with it.

"And what if I don't?" he asked plainly.

"Then you'd have to be a very stupid Spartan," the hard voice said. "Last chance."

Bryce's motion tracker showed eight red blobs arrayed around the clearing, and though he couldn't see them, he knew where their sights were pointing. There was little he could do but comply. He dropped the gun.

He heard the weapon fall with a soft thud. Booted footsteps crunched over to retrieve it. Bryce listened, gauging the man's position. He sounded like he was directly underneath, right in the blind spot of his motion tracker. Bryce wondered if that was intentional.

"Okay, Spartan," the man said. "Get comfortable up there, because if you move at all, my men will fire on you. Got me?"

"Sure," Bryce grunted. He knew Bluebell was already communicating his plight to _Buoyant. _Help would come. He just had to stall for time.

"And if you're thinking of calling for help, don't bother. The Covenant have got this area jammed to hell and back. It's just us down here."

_Jammed?_ He already knew that wasn't the case. He'd just spoken to the ONI ship not an hour ago. The Insurrectionist had to be bluffing.

"Bluebell," he said, turning off his external enunciator. "Open a channel to _Buoyant. _Emergency freq_._"

He waited, but there was no response. Not even a whisper of static.

"Blue!" he tried again. Nothing. Wherever his AI was, she wasn't answering. Odd. He tried to open the channel himself, to the same result. It appeared that comms _were _jammed. It must have been a recent development. Bryce put aside that information for later.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"Only this," the Insurrectionist leader replied without arrogance. "First, we're going to have a little talk. Then, you're going to go do what you came here for."


End file.
